Gaza’s ‘center of gravity:’ IDF destroys tunnel used by Hamas leaders

The IDF on Wednesday revealed a strategic tunnel that Hamas’s leadership used during the war, which it has just destroyed in Khan Yunis.

Primarily, the mission of destroying tunnels in Gaza has fallen to the elite anti-tunnel Yahalom Unit, a unit which was developed after the 2014 Gaza conflict caught the IDF unprepared for the cope of Hamas’s tunnel threat.

To date, Yahalom has destroyed 11 strategic tunnels that constitute the “center of gravity” of Hamas’s tunnel network, with each one, including the one revealed on Wednesday, requiring an investment of millions of shekels.

Regarding this specific tunnel, the IDF and Yahalom discovered at a certain point that part of a tunnel network it was exploring led to a larger expansive network.

To fully explore the new network, the IDF had to pry open powerful blast doors that were designed to prevent or slow IDF advancement underground.

Further, the IDF used special intelligence methods to identify Hamas terrorists on the other side of the blast doors, something which made it easier for the IDF to kill them in battle.

Once the IDF had dispatched the Hamas forces protecting the inner strategic tunnel area, they found extensive sleeping quarters, electric and water infrastructure, bathrooms, and kitchens full of a variety of foods and other items.

This strategic tunnel runs for more than a kilometer, and the IDF said that until the recent deep invasion of all portions of Khan Yunis, including the western and southern portions, it had been used by Hamas’s leaders to manage the war.

How long will it take to destroy the Hamas tunnel network?

Top IDF officials have told The Jerusalem Post that it will take years to eliminate the Hamas tunnel threat.

In contrast, on Wednesday, IDF sources said that the key strategic aspects of the Hamas tunnel network had now all been destroyed other than in Rafah, where the IDF has not yet invaded.

Yahalom has also been responsible for using the Atlantis water flooding project to attack Hamas’s tunnel network.

There have been mixed reviews about how large a solution Atlantis can be to the broader tunnel issue, but numerous defense sources have said that the two areas where Atlantis was deployed have had significant success, even if they are not a magic wand to end the tunnel threat. 

The most important tunnel for managing the war was said to be the Lion and Honey major communications tunnel in Rimal in northern Gaza, followed by its backup communications center in a strategic tunnel in Khan Yunis.

A network connecting the Shifa Hospital tunnels to the military quarter tunnels and other areas in northern Gaza was also viewed by the IDF as crucial to Hamas’s operations.

In its various tunnel explorations, Yahalom found 1,325 grenades, 940 improvised explosives, 696 rocket-propelled grenades, and many other weapons.

Yahalom has mapped over 100 kilometers of tunnels and completely destroyed over 317 significant tunnel shafts, in addition to Yahalom and the IDF neutralizing a much larger number of tunnel shafts.

The first women Yahalom combat fighter-engineers are due to join Yahalom’s forces in April of this year after over a full year of training, with somewhere around 10 or so expected to make it through the full training.

JPost