IDF shores up underground defences against Hamas

“These are legitimate military targets,” the commander of the IDF’s Southern Command, Major General Eyal Zamir, said. “Anyone there is endangering themselves if fighting breaks out. We have no will or intention to harm civilians, but Hamas’s pattern will force us to act in self-defence to protect our own people”. 

A  Hamas spokesman responded: “Israel’s threats don’t frighten us. We will continue holding on to all the means of resistance possible. All the steps carried out by the [Israeli] occupation won’t provide them with security as long they are occupying our land and besieging our people”. 

Israeli intelligence claims that despite the increasing shortages and crumbling infrastructure in Gaza, Hamas is still diverting funds from civilian needs to construction of new tunnels and the manufacture of rockets. The chief concern within the IDF is that Hamas’s military commanders will not wait for the underground obstacle to be completed, but will use one of the tunnels to launch a surprise attack on an Israeli village or military outpost, with the aim of capturing soldiers and achieving a psychological blow against the Israeli home-front. 

There are growing voices within the Israeli government for creating a “civil option” for Gaza, in the shape of an artificial island, near the shoreline, which would provide a supervised port and new power and desalination plants, to alleviate the shortages of electricity and drinking water. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman are, for now, opposed to this plan, which they claim would “reward Hamas”. 

Meanwhile, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is also pressuring Gaza and cutting off funds as part of his plan to pressure the rival Hamas leadership. An Egyptian plan to open the Rafah border crossing for goods and people, in return for new security arrangements on the border, could alleviate the situation within Gaza but will not by itself create major incentives for Hamas’s military wing to hold off a future attack. 

Three years since the end of Operation Protective Edge, Hamas has kept to the ceasefire in Israel and focused on rebuilding its arsenal while the civilian infrastructure continues to crumble. As electricity is available for only four hours a day and Hamas now faces the prospect of losing one of its key military assets, the ceasefire is looking increasingly tenuous.