Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) Gen. Yoav Mordechai on Wednesday Night told the Palestinian news agency Ma’an that “the Hamas tunnels are death tunnels, bringing catastrophe upon the Gaza Strip.” He accused Hamas of building the terror tunnels at the expense of the local population. When he was asked if Israel had a hand in the collapse of several tunnels in recent days, Mordechai answered, “God only knows.”
On Wednesday night Palestinian sources told Walla that yet another Hamas tunnel had collapsed, a third in less than a week, in the A-Zeitun neighborhood in southern Gaza City. It is not yet known if there were casualties. Earlier on the same day Hamas’s armed wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, reported that two of its people had been killed and at least seven injured in a tunnel collapse around Netzarim in central Gaza Strip. The organization described the dead as martyrs “preparing for the war against Israel.”
According to an Army Radio reporter Tal Lev-Ram twit, the A-Zeitun collapsed tunnel was an attack tunnel. It appears that, like relationships, terror tunnels are also a two-way street, and when one builds a network of tunnels pointing outward, those same tunnels can be used in the opposite direction.
The Institute for Palestine Studies reported that Hamas employs many children in tunnel building, accusing the terrorist organization of a “cavalier approach to child labor and tunnel fatalities,” as “nothing was done to impede the use of children in the tunnels, where, much as in Victorian coal mines, they are prized for their nimble bodies.”
Also on Wednesday, Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon (Kulanu) toured the Jewish communities that circle the Gaza border and promised residents that budget constraints “will not impede the safety of the residents [living near the border].” Although Kahlon did not mention a specific project he intended to promote, it is expected that he plans to finance a barrier around the Strip that would effectively block the digging of tunnels into Israeli territory.
And so, as in the much hailed Iron Dome mobile all-weather air defense system, Israel finds itself spending enormous amounts of money to develop the technology to block the murderous designs of an enemy that could be taken care of with conventional, low-cost means, had Israel’s leaders possessed the conviction to use them.
Meanwhile, a senior Hamas official delivered a calming message to Israel, telling Walla Wednesday night that the organization is not planning an aggressive move against the Jewish State in the near future. “Our position is clear, we don’t want an escalation and we don’t want war,” the senior Hams man said, emphasizing, “We have no intention, now or in the future, to start a war, and as far as we are concerned, that option is not on the table.”
The same senior official was then asked to explain the exact opposite message delivered last Friday by Hamas deputy chief Ismail Haniyeh, who announced during the funeral of seven Hamas “martyrs” killed under a caved tunnel: “There are those who think that the calm is a time of rest, but this is a continuation of the struggle. Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades are working and preparing for Palestine. Fighters are digging twice as much as the number of tunnels dug in Vietnam.”
Said the official: Those things were said on the occasion of a military funeral for the seven martyrs, “but even Haniyeh has said more than once that he is not interested in an escalation.
Could have fooled us. On the same occasion last Friday, Haniyeh declared: “In east Gaza there are heroes digging tunnels under the ground and in the west there are those testing rockets. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades are digging tunnels to defend Gaza and turn it into a launch pad for all of Palestine.”
Sounds like a detailed invitation for the Israeli Air Force.