Israel Plans to Flood Hamas Tunnels with Seawater from the Mediterranean

(iexclusivenews) – Israel has prepared a plan to destroy Hamas’s underground network of tunnels in the Gaza Strip by pumping seawater from the Mediterranean Sea into them, according to a report on Monday.

The Wall Street Journal reported, citing US officials, that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) set up five large water pumps near the al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza City last month. These pumps can fill the tunnels with thousands of cubic meters of water per hour, forcing the Hamas fighters to come out of their hidden passages and bases.

The officials said that Israel informed the US about the plan last month, but has not yet decided whether to execute it or not.

The report said that it was not clear if the IDF would proceed with the plan before all the hostages that Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups kidnapped during the October 7 attack in southern Israel were released.

The plan could pose a risk to the hostages who are being held underground.

The report also said that the Biden administration had mixed views on the Israeli plan.

Some officials expressed concern about the possible environmental and humanitarian consequences of the plan.

While others said they supported Israel’s efforts to eliminate the tunnels and that there was no American opposition to the plan.

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Potential Environmental and Humanitarian Risks of the Plan

The report mentioned some of the potential risks of the plan, such as:

– Damage to Gaza’s aquifer and soil, if seawater and hazardous substances in the tunnels leak into them.

– Impact on the foundations of buildings, if the water pressure causes them to collapse or crack.

– Displacement of civilians, if the water floods their homes or neighborhoods.

“We are not sure how successful pumping will be since nobody knows the details of the tunnels and the ground around them,” a person familiar with the plan told the Wall Street Journal. “It’s impossible to know if that will be effective because we don’t know how seawater will drain in tunnels no one has been in before.”

The report noted that in 2015, the Egyptian military flooded several smuggling tunnels under the Gaza Strip’s southern border with seawater.

IDF’s Progress in Destroying the Tunnels

On Sunday, the IDF announced that its soldiers have discovered more than 800 tunnel shafts in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the ground operation against Hamas that started in late October.

The IDF said that it has already destroyed 500 of these shafts.

The military also said that it has destroyed hundreds of kilometers of tunnels, in addition to the shafts.

“The shafts were located in civilian areas, and many of them were located near or inside educational institutions, kindergartens, mosques, and playgrounds,” the IDF said.

The IDF also said that it found Hamas weapons in some of the tunnels.

Israel has vowed to overthrow Hamas after the October 7 massacres, in which about 3,000 Palestinian terrorists crossed the border from Gaza and killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians who were brutally murdered and tortured, and took around 240 hostages.

During a seven-day ceasefire, which ended on Friday after Hamas did not deliver a list of hostages it intended to free and resumed firing rockets an hour before the ceasefire expired.

The terror group released 105 civilian hostages: 81 Israelis, 23 Thai nationals, and one Filipino. It is believed that 136 hostages are still in Gaza.

In exchange, Israel released 210 Palestinian security prisoners, all women and minors. Additionally, some 200 trucks, including four tankers of fuel and four tankers of cooking gas, entered Gaza each day.

(Times of Israel)