On the Way to the Tunnels
Israel Defense correspondent Or Heller went out to search for underground cross-border tunnels in the Gaza Strip with a tank crew from the IDF 401st Armored Brigade
Or Heller
| 14/07/2016
Photo: IDF
The mud of the Gaza Strip was extremely boggy that morning. This phrase is not an over-worn neoclassic metaphor used as the opening for articles about the Gaza Strip, but a very accurate description. The last rain of an Israeli-Gazan winter turned the sand of the Gaza plain into a knee-deep mire. The crew of a Merkava Mark-IV tank from "C" Company of the 46th battalion, the Nahmias crew, is the crew of the religious guys of the battalion. Four 'skullcaps' who found themselves serving together, despite the fact that they had specifically asked to serve with secular servicemen.
Staff Sergeant Michael Nahmias, 21, from Netanya is the commander of their tank and the only member of the crew who had participated in Operation Protective Edge. "From the ceremony at the Shizafon training base they transported us directly to the assembly areas. The atmosphere was the same as during Operation Pillar of Defense (the previous IDF operation in the Gaza Strip in 2012 that included an aerial campaign but no ground move – O.H.). We did not know whether we were going in or not, until the battalion commander told us that at 22:00 hours we will be entering Khan-Yunis together with the paratroopers. The mission was to find tunnels, raid all kinds of places and get the forces into the Strip. I saw one massive tunnel – huge. A tunnel extending to a few kilometers. It took us a while to find it. We fired at least 40 shells and hit people who wanted to kill us, in one case – people who had come out of a tunnel shaft. During Operation Protective Edge I realized that the armored forces dominate the war. I saw an infantry company commander firing one magazine after the other and doing nothing."
We meet at the post manned jointly by the armored unit and the Golani infantry brigade, with the strongest reminder of Operation Protective Edge provided by the Golani warfighters, who report to a physical fitness session wearing shirts that carry photographs of the late Oron Shaul, who had been killed during the "Golani APC disaster" in Shuja'iyya. The shirts read "Oron, expecting your return." Oron Shaul's body was taken by Hamas through a tunnel in Shuja'iyya and he was declared 'Killed in action whose burial place is unknown'.
Their post is located in a sector known as "the knee". It is the tip of the border area, out of which we used to observe Beit Hanoun and Jebeliyeh. They man the tank assigned to the post, which is currently manned by the 'Lions of Wrath' Company from the 13th battalion of the Golani Infantry Brigade. The tank crew from the 401st Armored Brigade enjoys total autonomy after months of serving along the front line in their Merkava Mark-IV tank fitted with the Trophy antitank missile interception system – the most advanced tank of the IDF – a computerized monster adapted specifically to the front line of the Gaza Strip. "Operation Protective Edge provided an answer to anyone who had claimed that tanks were no longer relevant. We have the most significant firepower of all ground elements. The infantry is playing with cap guns. Before Operation Protective Edge, I never knew such tunnels could even exist. I was taken by surprise. You think of the small tunnels and do not understand until you actually see it," says tank commander Nahmias.
Jonathan Weisinger is the loader-signaler, but everyone calls him "Shiftzuri" (= "Upgrader") because he upgrades everything he touches. He is a Jersey Boy who immigrated to Israel while he was in the tenth grade and his American accent is hardly noticeable anymore. "Israel is my home. That is what I came here for. I was named after Jonathan (Yoni) Netanyahu and at age 12 I decided to make Aliyah. My parents gave up trying to convince me to stay in the USA and remained in Jersey," he told us.
Eldar Cohen from Moshav Amatziyah is the gunner. "This is the best position in the tank crew," he says, "But every crew member thinks his position is the best one." Elad Lavi is the driver, in charge of the 1,500 horsepower engine. As stated, all of the members of this crew are religious. They swear it was pure chance and that they had originally wanted to serve with secular servicemen. "We are the only religious crew. It came to be that way purely by chance. I had joined the military to serve with secular servicemen. In the training courses, I had asked that not everyone in my crew be religious," says tank commander Nahmias. "In a tank crew you know very well who had not changed his socks for a week. It is like the relationship of a married couple."
The Iron Dome of the Tunnels
"So, where is the nearest tunnel?" I ask tank commander Nahmias.
"You tell me. Just like you, we do not know," says tank commander Michael Nahmias. "In the war against the tunnels, the tanks are very relevant. The tunnels are a threat to the tanks, too. We are concerned about the possibility that they may come out and take us by surprise, and the threat is one of 360 degrees. We are a target for terrorists coming out of a tunnel, so we must remain fully alert and operational. The Gilad Shalit incident had altered our consciousness. Many things have changed since then. Now we are cooperating closely with the infantry and watch each other. Things are not what they used to be in the past. Now it will not be so easy for them."
We are located between Erez and Nir'am. The commander of the Gefen Battalion of the IDF Officers School, Lieutenant-Colonel Dolev Keidar, whose widow Michal Kastan I met after the war, had been killed not far from here when he assaulted a Hamas detachment that had come out of a tunnel inside Israeli territory, on the way to attack a nearby Kibbutz.
"Hamas is busy excavating, intensively. They are excavating in order to reclaim the primary asset they had during Operation Protective Edge, as far as they are concerned – the tunnels.
So what is the current status of that "Iron Dome system for the tunnels", the technological solution regarding which the people of Israel were asking "where is it" in the summer of 2014?
The IDF Censorship, for obvious reasons, does not enable us to elaborate on the technological system we will refer to as "The Iron Dome of the Tunnels", as the real name of the system is still classified. The reason for it is very simple: Israel does not want Hamas to know what it knows about the tunnel system Hamas has been preparing for the next confrontation in the Gaza Strip. There is always the fear that if the Israeli defense establishment reveals anything about the tunnel detection system, Hamas will order the entire personnel of their so-called elite "Nukhba" unit to execute as many tunnel-based attacks as quickly as possible, having realized that the entire project is in danger.
In many ways, the tunnel concept of Hamas complements their rocket concept. While the rockets, inspired by Saddam Hussein, were intended to bypass the Israeli Air Force and Israeli tanks and land directly in the Israelis' rear area, the infamous tunnels were intended to recreate the same maneuver inside the subterranean medium, namely – to bypass the Israeli tanks and watchtowers along the border and take the Israelis by surprise, out of nowhere, inside Israeli territory. The disadvantage of the tunnel is the fact that once it is exposed, it can no longer be used. Its strength is in its secret existence and that secret existence is precisely what the new system is intended to eliminate. If we were called upon to use a metaphor for the contest of minds between IDF and Hamas over the past 15 years, that metaphor would refer to the relations between a burglar and a locksmith. Hamas digs tunnels? IDF inserts sensors into the soil. So Hamas digs deeper tunnels, lines those tunnels with concrete and extends each of them to a few kilometers. This makes the task of destroying those tunnels much more difficult to accomplish, a task that requires massive amounts of explosives. Over the years, IDF tried various measures including slurry walls. Additionally, you need a reliable system to spot the location of the tunnels and agile ground forces that would blow them up quickly, effectively and with minimum casualties. The system IDF currently uses was deployed as a pilot project along the border with the Gaza Strip. In the past, the system was regarded as unreliable owing to the numerous false alarms it generated. Minister of Defense Moshe Ya'alon, who personally supervises the system owing its importance, said recently in a close discussion that he is optimistic and that the defense establishment is advancing in the right direction with this highly important, top secret project.
So what can be said about the system? Foreign Policy Magazine has recently published an extensive article about what it termed "Israel's secret weapon system for destroying the tunnels". The magazine claimed that the USA is fully cooperating with the development of the new system, including the actual financing. "Our warfighters continue to excavate tunnels diligently, twice as many tunnels as the Viet Cong had in Vietnam," boasted Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh recently. Incidentally, the price of one bag of cement in Gaza is 560 ILS. On the black market, the same bag of cement can easily fetch 800 ILS.
Unprecedented Efforts
So far, Israel has invested in the project a quarter of a billion dollars. The Americans have invested in "The Iron Dome of the Tunnels" at least 40 million dollars more. The US Congress has recently authorized the appropriation of 120 million dollars to the project. As the Americans are participating in the financing of "The Iron Dome of the Tunnels", they will receive its prototype. They will also have full access to the testing site of the new system. After all, "he who pays the piper calls the tune," so the Israeli patent may be registered in the Americans' name with regard to copyrights and intellectual property aspects. Foreign Policy Magazine claimed that the engineers of two Israeli defense industries, Elbit Systems and Raphael (the company that developed the Iron Dome system) are taking part in the project. Both companies refuse to betray any details about the top secret project for the time being. According to the magazine, the system consists, among other things, of seismic sensors capable of monitoring the ground and whatever goes on under it and detecting changes, namely – tunnels.
In a memorial speech delivered in honor of the late former IDF Chief of Staff Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, the present Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, hinted at the unprecedented efforts made by IDF in an attempt to detect the tunnels excavated by Hamas, when he revealed that about 100 heavy engineering platforms are operating along the border with the Gaza Strip for the purpose of detecting the tunnels – the highest number of platforms ever employed by IDF.
While the system is still in its pilot phase and has not been declared as operational yet, senior officials of the Israeli defense establishment are toying with the idea of making this system completely confidential, namely – to avoid any public announcements even when it is ready and operational, so as to retain the element of surprise. One thing is clear, though: in the Gaza Strip, a new narrative is evolving, according to which "The Israelis are destroying our tunnels one by one using their new technological development."
When Maj. Gen. Yoav "Pauly" Mordechai was interviewed by the Palestinian news agency Ma'an News, he relished giving the standard answer of "Only Allah knows" when asked whether Israel was using a secret system to destroy the tunnels. Maj. Gen. Mordechai, who had advanced through the ranks as the controller of Arab agents with Human Intelligence Unit 504, knows a thing or two about manipulations vis-à-vis the terrorist organizations. Incidentally, the explanation given by the Israeli defense establishment to the series of mysterious tunnel collapses is fairly prosaic. The collapsing tunnels were blamed on the massive number of tunnels being built simultaneously and the difficulty in attaining Israeli cement from the deliveries entering the Gaza Strip daily through Kerem-Shalom, which are strictly supervised and controlled.
Eventually, "The Iron Dome of the Tunnels" will cost between 2 and 3 billion ILS. The vision is to install sensors along the entire 60-kilometer long circumference of the Gaza Strip in order to detect the tunnels. During Operation Protective Edge it was estimated that completing the system would require about a year, but more than eighteen months after Operation Protective Edge, the Israeli authorities still avoid declaring that the system is operational.
Monitoring Excavation Noises
Today's most common technology relies on monitoring the noises generated by the excavation process. In 2009, researchers from the civil and environmental engineering faculty at the Technion presented a method for detecting tunnels using a technology of subterranean monitoring. They proposed to develop smart subterranean security fences capable of identifying and spotting the tunnel excavation activity, as this activity involves the displacement of soil. The technology presented by the researchers from the Technion made it possible to investigate dozens of kilometer long section of the border simultaneously by a single device normally used for measurement, at the cost of a few ILS per meter. Other proposals involved the planting of underground microphones.
In the context of the underground arms race against the Palestinians, Hamas in Gaza claims that they have restored their tunnel system to its state prior to Operation Protective Edge. In the IDF they regard this claim as utter nonsense. One thing is certain: the importance of the technological system Israel is developing for the tunnel threat cannot be overstated. Maj. Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin, formerly the head of the IDF Intelligence Directorate and currently the Executive Director of Tel-Aviv University's Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), claims that Israel's optimal solution opposite the Gaza Strip in the face of a reality of repeated rounds of fighting against Hamas since 2009, in which Israel failed to achieve the required strategic objective, is long-term deterrence. Yadlin regards the technological solution for the tunnel problem as an opportunity to put off the inevitable next round against Hamas and to reach it from a better position once it has erupted. Yadlin agrees that Operation Protective Edge proved to Hamas that the offensive tunnels they had excavated into Israeli territory were their most effective strategic weapon. Most of the other surprises Hamas had prepared for the war, like the rockets, UAVs and naval commandos, failed to achieve their objective, but the tunnels did.
"If a technology for spotting and/or blocking tunnels is developed and implemented, the alternative of restraining and building up our preparedness for the next confrontation will be easier to adopt. Such a technology will provide Israel with the latitude, the breathing space it needs in order to prepare a plan of operation opposite Hamas, based on the knowledge that the tunnels are no longer the surprising strategic card they are today. Just as the Iron Dome system proved during the last few rounds of fighting that it has a highly important strategic value owing to its ability to eliminate the steep trajectory threat almost completely in most areas inside Israel, an 'underground Iron Dome' will, presumably, change Israel's opening state in the next confrontation. For this reason, budgeting solutions should be found as soon as possible, to enable the implementation of the technologies that ensure the accurate spotting of the tunnels. However, as long as this solution is not yet mature, then as the uncertainty regarding the outbreak of a confrontation in the near future increases, the tunnel issue would have to be dealt with as a top priority and with maximum intensity – even by a preemptive strike," wrote Maj. Gen. Yadlin in an article published last month by Tel-Aviv University's Institute for National Strategic Studies.
The Tunnels – a Longstanding Threat
The State Comptroller, retired justice Joseph Shapira, is currently completing a critical report regarding the preparations and readiness of the Israeli defense establishment for the challenge of the tunnels in the Gaza Strip. A draft version has already been submitted to the Prime Minister, Minister of Defense and IDF Chief of Staff, but the sad and predictable bottom line of the final report will be the fact that IDF have been aware of the tunnels in the Gaza Strip for the past 15 years or so (as opposed to the statements of certain politicians who gained political capital last summer by claiming that they were the first to identify the issue of the tunnels in the Gaza Strip). However, the answer to the question of what had actually been done with regard to this issue is far more complex.
Between 2001 and late 2004, the terrorist organizations, and mainly the local Hamas groups in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, managed to stage five attacks through the subterranean medium, in which seven IDF troopers were killed. In four of those attacks, explosive tunnels were detonated under IDF posts in the Gaza Strip: at the Termite post in September 2001, at the Hardon post in December 2003, at the Orkhan post in June 2004 and at the JVT post in December 2004 – where five IDF troopers were killed. Another tunnel was used to insert terrorists into the Erez industrial zone in February 2004 – an incident in which another IDF trooper was killed. Seven additional IDF troopers were killed during the attempts by IDF to address the tunnel threat: five troopers were killed in May 2004 on board a combat engineering APC operating at the Philadelphy route. One trooper was killed in November 2004 when a tunnel wall collapsed near the Hardon IDF post, and another trooper was killed while searching for tunnels in December 2004.
Subterranean warfare continues to constitute a threat in the Gaza Strip sector even after the pullout from the Strip. In December 2005, Deputy Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinski stated: "The tunnel threat still exists and as the number of successful operational attempts to prevent passage through the fence system will intensify, so will the Palestinians' need to find a solution for crossing the fence through the tunnels. Additionally, numerous attractive weaknesses exist along the fence system in the form of pillboxes, battalion command posts and bases that constitute targets for attacks staged through tunnels." It should be stated that in November 2005, IDF evacuated a post in the new deployment sector around the Gaza Strip owing to fears that a tunnel had been excavated into that post. In December 2005, a tunnel was spotted under the Hoovers route, near the Erez passage, and in June 2006, terrorists entered an IDF post near Kerem-Shalom through a tunnel, killed two IDF troopers and kidnapped another. His name was Gilad Shalit – you could not have forgotten all about it!
Israeli Cement in the Tunnels
I vividly remember the tunnel the former commander of IDF Southern Command, Maj. Gen. Sammy Turjeman, showed me in October 2013, more than six months prior to Operation Protective Edge. That tunnel led to the area of Kibbutz Ein-HaShlosha from the center of the Gaza Strip. I walked through it without any restriction, despite my height of 1.84m (6' plus) on a good day and my considerable girth. Scattered there on the tunnel floor, in addition to bags containing the fresh urine of the Hamas diggers, were bags of cement carrying Hebrew inscriptions.
How can we prevent the massive reconstruction of the Gaza Strip following Operation Protective Edge, which was originally intended to put off the next war, from speeding up the next confrontation by rebuilding Hamas' tunnel system using the Israeli cement delivered into the Gaza Strip in order to reconstruct it? After Operation Protective Edge, the Coordinator of Government Operations in the Territories, Maj. Gen. Yoav "Pauly" Mordechai, established, in cooperation with the UN and the Palestinian Authority, an administrative mechanism known as SHOFAR (Hebrew acronym for "Gaza Strip Reconstruction & Supervision"). Pauly thought it would last two months. Meanwhile, more than eighteen months after the war, SHOFAR is still working.
Let's do some cement arithmetic: 130,000 housing units in the Gaza Strip were damaged during Operation Protective Edge. 18,000 were completely destroyed. 75,000 housing units are currently needed in the Gaza Strip. Qatar provided a budget of US$ 800 million and, among other things, rebuilt Saladin Road, the continuation of Israeli Highway #4 after you turn left at the Yad-Mordechai gas station.
The trick of the reconstruction administration is simple conceptually but infinitely complicated to execute: delivering cement for hospitals, residential buildings and kindergartens, provided it would not be used for the tunnels. Close-circuit surveillance cameras were installed at the construction sites of the housing projects and specialized tracking software was installed for this purpose specifically – to track every shipment of cement entering the Gaza Strip through the Kerem-Shalom passage. Additionally, every Palestinian contractor must go through a process of approval by the reconstruction administration. If it is found out that the contractor is cheating or setting aside bags of cement for the benefit of the nearest Hamas tunnel, he will be suspended from the reconstruction program immediately. In the last eighteen months, the cement delivery licenses of about 100 Gaza Strip contractors against whom suspicions had been raised were revoked. The numbers are substantial: 4 million tons of construction materials and 3.25 million tons of gravel. So far, about 80,000 houses in the Gaza Strip have been rebuilt using this cement. If this activity continues at the same rate, within about one year the damage sustained by buildings in the Gaza Strip as a result of 51 days of bombing and shelling will be completely reconstructed.
Since Operation Protective Edge, the funds provided by Qatar go to the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip rather than helping Hamas rearm in preparation for the next round. Iran finds it difficult to smuggle arms into the Gaza Strip owing to the decisive activities of the el-Sisi regime in Egypt and the effective operations of IDF far away from here, in the context of what the IDF regards as the operation between wars. Generally, a Gordian knot between economy and security currently exists in the Gaza Strip, with eight hours of power supply per day, the economic situation is similar to the situation prior to Operation Protective Edge. Today IDF regard Operation Protective Edge as an economic war. 1.3 million Gazans currently live at the expense of UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East. The average daily wage in the Gaza Strip is 63 ILS (prior to Operation Protective Edge, the average daily wage in the Gaza Strip was 61.6 ILS). The population growth rate in the Gaza Strip is the highest in the Western world at 2.91% in 2014, compared to 1.46% in Israel and 1.99% in the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.
Social media in the Gaza Strip provide a platform for bloggers who openly criticize the rule of Hamas. Admittedly, they are usually invited to an interrogation on the following morning, but they still continue to write. Marwan Issa, known as the "Yisrael Galili of Hamas", is the planner of the next confrontation, and the person that oversees everything from above is the father of the tunnel effort, Mohammed Deif. Yes – Deif is still alive.
Since the end of Operation Protective Edge, Hamas has not fired even a single firecracker. The 33 rockets fired into Israel's southern region had all been launched by what IDF refer to by the attractive name of "rogue organizations" – those organizations who want to be ISIS and disregard the fire policy of Hamas, despite the 37 Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip since the end of Operation Protective Edge. Prior to the last war, every Palestinian killed – a civilian in particular – would have triggered the firing of rockets into Israel's south.
At least sixteen Hamas activists were killed in seven tunnels that collapsed recently. While initially Hamas attempted to cover up those deaths, the collapsing tunnels and the funerals, the abundance of activist deaths made secrecy impossible. Now every Hamas activist killed under similar circumstances receives a Hamas military funeral, with green flags and full honors, as Hamas is trying to create a new ethos: "The tunnel men are going to Jerusalem".
Despair currently dominates the Gaza Strip. 66% of all local youngsters are unemployed. The masses are hungry. Only a handful of elite groups enjoy their fleshpots. The dream of everyone else is to get out of the cage known as the Gaza Strip. More than 90% of the water in the Strip is unsuitable for human consumption – it is as salty as sea water. There is a 50% shortage in electrical power supply. According to UN reports, Gaza will be unfit for human habitation by 2020. By then, they might all move into the tunnels.
Israel Defense correspondent Or Heller went out to search for underground cross-border tunnels in the Gaza Strip with a tank crew from the IDF 401st Armored Brigade
Photo: IDF
Staff Sergeant Michael Nahmias, 21, from Netanya is the commander of their tank and the only member of the crew who had participated in Operation Protective Edge. "From the ceremony at the Shizafon training base they transported us directly to the assembly areas. The atmosphere was the same as during Operation Pillar of Defense (the previous IDF operation in the Gaza Strip in 2012 that included an aerial campaign but no ground move – O.H.). We did not know whether we were going in or not, until the battalion commander told us that at 22:00 hours we will be entering Khan-Yunis together with the paratroopers. The mission was to find tunnels, raid all kinds of places and get the forces into the Strip. I saw one massive tunnel – huge. A tunnel extending to a few kilometers. It took us a while to find it. We fired at least 40 shells and hit people who wanted to kill us, in one case – people who had come out of a tunnel shaft. During Operation Protective Edge I realized that the armored forces dominate the war. I saw an infantry company commander firing one magazine after the other and doing nothing."
We meet at the post manned jointly by the armored unit and the Golani infantry brigade, with the strongest reminder of Operation Protective Edge provided by the Golani warfighters, who report to a physical fitness session wearing shirts that carry photographs of the late Oron Shaul, who had been killed during the "Golani APC disaster" in Shuja'iyya. The shirts read "Oron, expecting your return." Oron Shaul's body was taken by Hamas through a tunnel in Shuja'iyya and he was declared 'Killed in action whose burial place is unknown'.
Their post is located in a sector known as "the knee". It is the tip of the border area, out of which we used to observe Beit Hanoun and Jebeliyeh. They man the tank assigned to the post, which is currently manned by the 'Lions of Wrath' Company from the 13th battalion of the Golani Infantry Brigade. The tank crew from the 401st Armored Brigade enjoys total autonomy after months of serving along the front line in their Merkava Mark-IV tank fitted with the Trophy antitank missile interception system – the most advanced tank of the IDF – a computerized monster adapted specifically to the front line of the Gaza Strip. "Operation Protective Edge provided an answer to anyone who had claimed that tanks were no longer relevant. We have the most significant firepower of all ground elements. The infantry is playing with cap guns. Before Operation Protective Edge, I never knew such tunnels could even exist. I was taken by surprise. You think of the small tunnels and do not understand until you actually see it," says tank commander Nahmias.
Jonathan Weisinger is the loader-signaler, but everyone calls him "Shiftzuri" (= "Upgrader") because he upgrades everything he touches. He is a Jersey Boy who immigrated to Israel while he was in the tenth grade and his American accent is hardly noticeable anymore. "Israel is my home. That is what I came here for. I was named after Jonathan (Yoni) Netanyahu and at age 12 I decided to make Aliyah. My parents gave up trying to convince me to stay in the USA and remained in Jersey," he told us.
Eldar Cohen from Moshav Amatziyah is the gunner. "This is the best position in the tank crew," he says, "But every crew member thinks his position is the best one." Elad Lavi is the driver, in charge of the 1,500 horsepower engine. As stated, all of the members of this crew are religious. They swear it was pure chance and that they had originally wanted to serve with secular servicemen. "We are the only religious crew. It came to be that way purely by chance. I had joined the military to serve with secular servicemen. In the training courses, I had asked that not everyone in my crew be religious," says tank commander Nahmias. "In a tank crew you know very well who had not changed his socks for a week. It is like the relationship of a married couple."
The Iron Dome of the Tunnels
"So, where is the nearest tunnel?" I ask tank commander Nahmias.
"You tell me. Just like you, we do not know," says tank commander Michael Nahmias. "In the war against the tunnels, the tanks are very relevant. The tunnels are a threat to the tanks, too. We are concerned about the possibility that they may come out and take us by surprise, and the threat is one of 360 degrees. We are a target for terrorists coming out of a tunnel, so we must remain fully alert and operational. The Gilad Shalit incident had altered our consciousness. Many things have changed since then. Now we are cooperating closely with the infantry and watch each other. Things are not what they used to be in the past. Now it will not be so easy for them."
We are located between Erez and Nir'am. The commander of the Gefen Battalion of the IDF Officers School, Lieutenant-Colonel Dolev Keidar, whose widow Michal Kastan I met after the war, had been killed not far from here when he assaulted a Hamas detachment that had come out of a tunnel inside Israeli territory, on the way to attack a nearby Kibbutz.
"Hamas is busy excavating, intensively. They are excavating in order to reclaim the primary asset they had during Operation Protective Edge, as far as they are concerned – the tunnels.
So what is the current status of that "Iron Dome system for the tunnels", the technological solution regarding which the people of Israel were asking "where is it" in the summer of 2014?
The IDF Censorship, for obvious reasons, does not enable us to elaborate on the technological system we will refer to as "The Iron Dome of the Tunnels", as the real name of the system is still classified. The reason for it is very simple: Israel does not want Hamas to know what it knows about the tunnel system Hamas has been preparing for the next confrontation in the Gaza Strip. There is always the fear that if the Israeli defense establishment reveals anything about the tunnel detection system, Hamas will order the entire personnel of their so-called elite "Nukhba" unit to execute as many tunnel-based attacks as quickly as possible, having realized that the entire project is in danger.
In many ways, the tunnel concept of Hamas complements their rocket concept. While the rockets, inspired by Saddam Hussein, were intended to bypass the Israeli Air Force and Israeli tanks and land directly in the Israelis' rear area, the infamous tunnels were intended to recreate the same maneuver inside the subterranean medium, namely – to bypass the Israeli tanks and watchtowers along the border and take the Israelis by surprise, out of nowhere, inside Israeli territory. The disadvantage of the tunnel is the fact that once it is exposed, it can no longer be used. Its strength is in its secret existence and that secret existence is precisely what the new system is intended to eliminate. If we were called upon to use a metaphor for the contest of minds between IDF and Hamas over the past 15 years, that metaphor would refer to the relations between a burglar and a locksmith. Hamas digs tunnels? IDF inserts sensors into the soil. So Hamas digs deeper tunnels, lines those tunnels with concrete and extends each of them to a few kilometers. This makes the task of destroying those tunnels much more difficult to accomplish, a task that requires massive amounts of explosives. Over the years, IDF tried various measures including slurry walls. Additionally, you need a reliable system to spot the location of the tunnels and agile ground forces that would blow them up quickly, effectively and with minimum casualties. The system IDF currently uses was deployed as a pilot project along the border with the Gaza Strip. In the past, the system was regarded as unreliable owing to the numerous false alarms it generated. Minister of Defense Moshe Ya'alon, who personally supervises the system owing its importance, said recently in a close discussion that he is optimistic and that the defense establishment is advancing in the right direction with this highly important, top secret project.
So what can be said about the system? Foreign Policy Magazine has recently published an extensive article about what it termed "Israel's secret weapon system for destroying the tunnels". The magazine claimed that the USA is fully cooperating with the development of the new system, including the actual financing. "Our warfighters continue to excavate tunnels diligently, twice as many tunnels as the Viet Cong had in Vietnam," boasted Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh recently. Incidentally, the price of one bag of cement in Gaza is 560 ILS. On the black market, the same bag of cement can easily fetch 800 ILS.
Unprecedented Efforts
So far, Israel has invested in the project a quarter of a billion dollars. The Americans have invested in "The Iron Dome of the Tunnels" at least 40 million dollars more. The US Congress has recently authorized the appropriation of 120 million dollars to the project. As the Americans are participating in the financing of "The Iron Dome of the Tunnels", they will receive its prototype. They will also have full access to the testing site of the new system. After all, "he who pays the piper calls the tune," so the Israeli patent may be registered in the Americans' name with regard to copyrights and intellectual property aspects. Foreign Policy Magazine claimed that the engineers of two Israeli defense industries, Elbit Systems and Raphael (the company that developed the Iron Dome system) are taking part in the project. Both companies refuse to betray any details about the top secret project for the time being. According to the magazine, the system consists, among other things, of seismic sensors capable of monitoring the ground and whatever goes on under it and detecting changes, namely – tunnels.
In a memorial speech delivered in honor of the late former IDF Chief of Staff Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, the present Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, hinted at the unprecedented efforts made by IDF in an attempt to detect the tunnels excavated by Hamas, when he revealed that about 100 heavy engineering platforms are operating along the border with the Gaza Strip for the purpose of detecting the tunnels – the highest number of platforms ever employed by IDF.
While the system is still in its pilot phase and has not been declared as operational yet, senior officials of the Israeli defense establishment are toying with the idea of making this system completely confidential, namely – to avoid any public announcements even when it is ready and operational, so as to retain the element of surprise. One thing is clear, though: in the Gaza Strip, a new narrative is evolving, according to which "The Israelis are destroying our tunnels one by one using their new technological development."
When Maj. Gen. Yoav "Pauly" Mordechai was interviewed by the Palestinian news agency Ma'an News, he relished giving the standard answer of "Only Allah knows" when asked whether Israel was using a secret system to destroy the tunnels. Maj. Gen. Mordechai, who had advanced through the ranks as the controller of Arab agents with Human Intelligence Unit 504, knows a thing or two about manipulations vis-à-vis the terrorist organizations. Incidentally, the explanation given by the Israeli defense establishment to the series of mysterious tunnel collapses is fairly prosaic. The collapsing tunnels were blamed on the massive number of tunnels being built simultaneously and the difficulty in attaining Israeli cement from the deliveries entering the Gaza Strip daily through Kerem-Shalom, which are strictly supervised and controlled.
Eventually, "The Iron Dome of the Tunnels" will cost between 2 and 3 billion ILS. The vision is to install sensors along the entire 60-kilometer long circumference of the Gaza Strip in order to detect the tunnels. During Operation Protective Edge it was estimated that completing the system would require about a year, but more than eighteen months after Operation Protective Edge, the Israeli authorities still avoid declaring that the system is operational.
Monitoring Excavation Noises
Today's most common technology relies on monitoring the noises generated by the excavation process. In 2009, researchers from the civil and environmental engineering faculty at the Technion presented a method for detecting tunnels using a technology of subterranean monitoring. They proposed to develop smart subterranean security fences capable of identifying and spotting the tunnel excavation activity, as this activity involves the displacement of soil. The technology presented by the researchers from the Technion made it possible to investigate dozens of kilometer long section of the border simultaneously by a single device normally used for measurement, at the cost of a few ILS per meter. Other proposals involved the planting of underground microphones.
In the context of the underground arms race against the Palestinians, Hamas in Gaza claims that they have restored their tunnel system to its state prior to Operation Protective Edge. In the IDF they regard this claim as utter nonsense. One thing is certain: the importance of the technological system Israel is developing for the tunnel threat cannot be overstated. Maj. Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin, formerly the head of the IDF Intelligence Directorate and currently the Executive Director of Tel-Aviv University's Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), claims that Israel's optimal solution opposite the Gaza Strip in the face of a reality of repeated rounds of fighting against Hamas since 2009, in which Israel failed to achieve the required strategic objective, is long-term deterrence. Yadlin regards the technological solution for the tunnel problem as an opportunity to put off the inevitable next round against Hamas and to reach it from a better position once it has erupted. Yadlin agrees that Operation Protective Edge proved to Hamas that the offensive tunnels they had excavated into Israeli territory were their most effective strategic weapon. Most of the other surprises Hamas had prepared for the war, like the rockets, UAVs and naval commandos, failed to achieve their objective, but the tunnels did.
"If a technology for spotting and/or blocking tunnels is developed and implemented, the alternative of restraining and building up our preparedness for the next confrontation will be easier to adopt. Such a technology will provide Israel with the latitude, the breathing space it needs in order to prepare a plan of operation opposite Hamas, based on the knowledge that the tunnels are no longer the surprising strategic card they are today. Just as the Iron Dome system proved during the last few rounds of fighting that it has a highly important strategic value owing to its ability to eliminate the steep trajectory threat almost completely in most areas inside Israel, an 'underground Iron Dome' will, presumably, change Israel's opening state in the next confrontation. For this reason, budgeting solutions should be found as soon as possible, to enable the implementation of the technologies that ensure the accurate spotting of the tunnels. However, as long as this solution is not yet mature, then as the uncertainty regarding the outbreak of a confrontation in the near future increases, the tunnel issue would have to be dealt with as a top priority and with maximum intensity – even by a preemptive strike," wrote Maj. Gen. Yadlin in an article published last month by Tel-Aviv University's Institute for National Strategic Studies.
The Tunnels – a Longstanding Threat
The State Comptroller, retired justice Joseph Shapira, is currently completing a critical report regarding the preparations and readiness of the Israeli defense establishment for the challenge of the tunnels in the Gaza Strip. A draft version has already been submitted to the Prime Minister, Minister of Defense and IDF Chief of Staff, but the sad and predictable bottom line of the final report will be the fact that IDF have been aware of the tunnels in the Gaza Strip for the past 15 years or so (as opposed to the statements of certain politicians who gained political capital last summer by claiming that they were the first to identify the issue of the tunnels in the Gaza Strip). However, the answer to the question of what had actually been done with regard to this issue is far more complex.
Between 2001 and late 2004, the terrorist organizations, and mainly the local Hamas groups in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, managed to stage five attacks through the subterranean medium, in which seven IDF troopers were killed. In four of those attacks, explosive tunnels were detonated under IDF posts in the Gaza Strip: at the Termite post in September 2001, at the Hardon post in December 2003, at the Orkhan post in June 2004 and at the JVT post in December 2004 – where five IDF troopers were killed. Another tunnel was used to insert terrorists into the Erez industrial zone in February 2004 – an incident in which another IDF trooper was killed. Seven additional IDF troopers were killed during the attempts by IDF to address the tunnel threat: five troopers were killed in May 2004 on board a combat engineering APC operating at the Philadelphy route. One trooper was killed in November 2004 when a tunnel wall collapsed near the Hardon IDF post, and another trooper was killed while searching for tunnels in December 2004.
Subterranean warfare continues to constitute a threat in the Gaza Strip sector even after the pullout from the Strip. In December 2005, Deputy Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinski stated: "The tunnel threat still exists and as the number of successful operational attempts to prevent passage through the fence system will intensify, so will the Palestinians' need to find a solution for crossing the fence through the tunnels. Additionally, numerous attractive weaknesses exist along the fence system in the form of pillboxes, battalion command posts and bases that constitute targets for attacks staged through tunnels." It should be stated that in November 2005, IDF evacuated a post in the new deployment sector around the Gaza Strip owing to fears that a tunnel had been excavated into that post. In December 2005, a tunnel was spotted under the Hoovers route, near the Erez passage, and in June 2006, terrorists entered an IDF post near Kerem-Shalom through a tunnel, killed two IDF troopers and kidnapped another. His name was Gilad Shalit – you could not have forgotten all about it!
Israeli Cement in the Tunnels
I vividly remember the tunnel the former commander of IDF Southern Command, Maj. Gen. Sammy Turjeman, showed me in October 2013, more than six months prior to Operation Protective Edge. That tunnel led to the area of Kibbutz Ein-HaShlosha from the center of the Gaza Strip. I walked through it without any restriction, despite my height of 1.84m (6' plus) on a good day and my considerable girth. Scattered there on the tunnel floor, in addition to bags containing the fresh urine of the Hamas diggers, were bags of cement carrying Hebrew inscriptions.
How can we prevent the massive reconstruction of the Gaza Strip following Operation Protective Edge, which was originally intended to put off the next war, from speeding up the next confrontation by rebuilding Hamas' tunnel system using the Israeli cement delivered into the Gaza Strip in order to reconstruct it? After Operation Protective Edge, the Coordinator of Government Operations in the Territories, Maj. Gen. Yoav "Pauly" Mordechai, established, in cooperation with the UN and the Palestinian Authority, an administrative mechanism known as SHOFAR (Hebrew acronym for "Gaza Strip Reconstruction & Supervision"). Pauly thought it would last two months. Meanwhile, more than eighteen months after the war, SHOFAR is still working.
Let's do some cement arithmetic: 130,000 housing units in the Gaza Strip were damaged during Operation Protective Edge. 18,000 were completely destroyed. 75,000 housing units are currently needed in the Gaza Strip. Qatar provided a budget of US$ 800 million and, among other things, rebuilt Saladin Road, the continuation of Israeli Highway #4 after you turn left at the Yad-Mordechai gas station.
The trick of the reconstruction administration is simple conceptually but infinitely complicated to execute: delivering cement for hospitals, residential buildings and kindergartens, provided it would not be used for the tunnels. Close-circuit surveillance cameras were installed at the construction sites of the housing projects and specialized tracking software was installed for this purpose specifically – to track every shipment of cement entering the Gaza Strip through the Kerem-Shalom passage. Additionally, every Palestinian contractor must go through a process of approval by the reconstruction administration. If it is found out that the contractor is cheating or setting aside bags of cement for the benefit of the nearest Hamas tunnel, he will be suspended from the reconstruction program immediately. In the last eighteen months, the cement delivery licenses of about 100 Gaza Strip contractors against whom suspicions had been raised were revoked. The numbers are substantial: 4 million tons of construction materials and 3.25 million tons of gravel. So far, about 80,000 houses in the Gaza Strip have been rebuilt using this cement. If this activity continues at the same rate, within about one year the damage sustained by buildings in the Gaza Strip as a result of 51 days of bombing and shelling will be completely reconstructed.
Since Operation Protective Edge, the funds provided by Qatar go to the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip rather than helping Hamas rearm in preparation for the next round. Iran finds it difficult to smuggle arms into the Gaza Strip owing to the decisive activities of the el-Sisi regime in Egypt and the effective operations of IDF far away from here, in the context of what the IDF regards as the operation between wars. Generally, a Gordian knot between economy and security currently exists in the Gaza Strip, with eight hours of power supply per day, the economic situation is similar to the situation prior to Operation Protective Edge. Today IDF regard Operation Protective Edge as an economic war. 1.3 million Gazans currently live at the expense of UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East. The average daily wage in the Gaza Strip is 63 ILS (prior to Operation Protective Edge, the average daily wage in the Gaza Strip was 61.6 ILS). The population growth rate in the Gaza Strip is the highest in the Western world at 2.91% in 2014, compared to 1.46% in Israel and 1.99% in the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.
Social media in the Gaza Strip provide a platform for bloggers who openly criticize the rule of Hamas. Admittedly, they are usually invited to an interrogation on the following morning, but they still continue to write. Marwan Issa, known as the "Yisrael Galili of Hamas", is the planner of the next confrontation, and the person that oversees everything from above is the father of the tunnel effort, Mohammed Deif. Yes – Deif is still alive.
Since the end of Operation Protective Edge, Hamas has not fired even a single firecracker. The 33 rockets fired into Israel's southern region had all been launched by what IDF refer to by the attractive name of "rogue organizations" – those organizations who want to be ISIS and disregard the fire policy of Hamas, despite the 37 Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip since the end of Operation Protective Edge. Prior to the last war, every Palestinian killed – a civilian in particular – would have triggered the firing of rockets into Israel's south.
At least sixteen Hamas activists were killed in seven tunnels that collapsed recently. While initially Hamas attempted to cover up those deaths, the collapsing tunnels and the funerals, the abundance of activist deaths made secrecy impossible. Now every Hamas activist killed under similar circumstances receives a Hamas military funeral, with green flags and full honors, as Hamas is trying to create a new ethos: "The tunnel men are going to Jerusalem".
Despair currently dominates the Gaza Strip. 66% of all local youngsters are unemployed. The masses are hungry. Only a handful of elite groups enjoy their fleshpots. The dream of everyone else is to get out of the cage known as the Gaza Strip. More than 90% of the water in the Strip is unsuitable for human consumption – it is as salty as sea water. There is a 50% shortage in electrical power supply. According to UN reports, Gaza will be unfit for human habitation by 2020. By then, they might all move into the tunnels.
