A video posted by an IDF soldier on Wednesday revealed a tunnel shaft in one of the villages in the Mount Hebron area. The soldier says he found the shaft during a patrol his unit conducted after receiving complaints from area Jewish residents who had been hearing noises of underground digging. The video shows a 5-meter-deep shaft that connects to a short tunnel that does not appear to be connected to other tunnels or has another shaft.
מנהרה בהר חברון. צפו בסרטון.
יש פה סכנה שצריכים להיות מודעים לה, בפרט תושבי קו התפר, יו״ש ואזורים מסוימים ירושלים.
צריך להיות עירניים לקולות חפירה הנשמעים מהקרקע, בפרט מי שגרים בפאתי הישובים. לנסות לצפות האם יש עבודות בינוי וחפירה בלתי הגיוניות אצל ״בני הדודים״ בכפרים הסמוכים.… pic.twitter.com/oeTQgnAKwK— Ariel Kahana אריאל כהנא (@arik3000) January 3, 2024
The Army speculated that the tunnel’s purpose was to collect rainwater – the reader is invited to judge whether this is the shape of a water-collection hole.
Past reports suggested Gaza is not the only Arab enclave that features numerous underground tunnels – Judea and Samaria Arabs are just as eager to create underground passages free from the IDF’s watchful eye.
Following the June 2014 Hamas kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers, the IDF’s Yahalom combat engineering unit conducted numerous tunnel searches in the hope of locating the boys.
In March 2021, the IDF Civil Administration discovered a 4-meter high, 5-meter-wide tunnel that had been dug under Rt. 35 which runs across Judea. The tunnel connects several villages, as part of the PA’s plan to take over Area C, which is completely under Israeli control.
Even if the numerous that have been dug by PA Arabs in Judea and Samaria were not initially intended for terrorism, they can be easily repurposed, starting with the storage of weapons, ammunition, and explosives, to be followed by using them to move murder squads through the area away from IDF control.
Recently, an ever-growing number of Israelis who live inside the Green Line but close to PA cities, have been raising the alarm about the sounds of digging they’ve been hearing under their homes in the middle of the night. The complaints stretch from residents in Upper Galilea to the Sharon Valley, and now all the way south to Mt. Hebron.
Needless to say, Israelis are haunted by the images of Arab murderers emerging from tunnel shafts and going about raping and beheading peaceful civilians. The security apparatus has been extremely responsive, devoting considerable resources to testing the ground in those areas where residents are hearing the digging. So far, the tunnel shaft in the Mt. Hebron area is the first tangible proof of recent diggings.
