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Gaza Ws

mmessons

Daniel Pipes I Israel Hayom

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depth, quality of construction and electronic
sophistication.
Jerusalem quickly realized, as the Times
of Israel wrote, that "Israel's air, sea and land
supremacy is not mirrored underground:'
The IDF thus requires additional time to
achieve subterranean dominance.
Consensus in Israel: llamas' unrelenting
barbarism created a rare consensus among
Jewish Israelis in favor of victory. This near
unanimity both strengthens the govern-
ment's hand in dealing with outside pow-
ers. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
admonished the U.S. administration never
again to second-guess him and is likely to
move Israeli domestic politics decisively to
the right into the nationalist camp.
Middle Eastern response: With the
exception of Hamas' state patrons (Turkey,
Qatar, Iran), the Islamist terrorists found
almost no governmental support in the
region. In one striking example, Saudi king
Abdullah said of Hamas killing Gazans, "It is
shameful and disgraceful that these terror-

ists are [mutilating the bodies of innocents
and proudly publicizing their actions] in the
name of religion:' How well he knows his
mortal enemy.
Rising anti-Semitism: Especially in
Europe, but also in Canada and Australia,
anti-Semitism came to the fore, mainly from
Palestinians and Islamists as well as from
their far-left allies. This response will, in all
probability, increase immigration to the two
havens of Jewish life, Israel and the United
States. By contrast, Middle East Muslims
kept quiet, with the exception of Turks and
those Arabs living under Israeli control.
Elite vs. popular responses: It's not every
day that the secretary-general of the United
Nations and all 28 foreign ministers of the
European Union side with Israel against an
Arab enemy, but that did occur. In the U.S.
Congress, the Senate unanimously approved
and the House voted 395-8 in favor of an
additional $225 million for the Iron Dome
program.
In contrast, among the wider public,
pro-Israel sentiment declined almost

everywhere (although not in the United
States). How to explain this disparity? My
hunch: Leaders imagine what they would
do if faced with enemy rockets and tunnels,
while the public focuses on photographs of
dead babies in Gaza.
Dead babies: Which brings us to the
most complex, counter-intuitive and
strange aspect of the entire conflict.
Because the IDF enjoys a crushing advan-
tage over llamas on the battlefield, their
confrontation resembled a police operation
more than a war. Thus, Israelis were judged
primarily by the clarity of their leaders'
public statements, the judicious use of force
and the handling of evidence.
Accordingly, media attention invariably
drifted from the military sphere to ques-
tions of proportionality, morality and poli-
tics. Hamas' greatest strategic weapon in
its effort to damage Israel's reputation and
ostracize it was neither rockets nor tunnels,
but wrenching photographs of dead civil-
ians purportedly killed by the IDE
This leads to the bizarre situation in which

Did Hamas Execute
Tunnel Diggers?

H

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Daniel Pipes is president of the Middle East
Forum.

IDF To Test New Tunnel-
Seeking Technologies

Marissa Newman
Times of Israel

amas executed dozens of diggers responsible for
its extensive tunnel system in past weeks, fear-
ing the workers would reveal the site locations
to Israel, a report on the Hebrew-language Mako website's
army blog said.
There was no independent confirmation of the report.
The tunnelers, many of whom constructed the tunnels
over the course of months, would dig for 8-12 hours a day
and received a monthly wage of $150-$300, according to
the blog.
Sources in Gaza told the website that Hamas took a
series of precautions to prevent information from reaching
Israel. The terror organization would reportedly blindfold
the excavators en route to the sites and back, to prevent
them from recognizing the locations. The tunnels were
strictly supervised by Hamas members, and civilians were
kept far from the sites.
A former tunnel digger and Israeli collaborator told
the website that Hamas would strip search the workers to
ensure they had no recording devices or cameras hidden
on them.
"The people we met had their faces covered; no one
knew them by their real names. It was all codes and first
names. They didn't want to take the risk that some of the
diggers were collaborating with Israel," he said.
After the tunnels were completed, dozens were report-
edly executed to prevent intelligence leaks to Israel.
"Anyone they suspected might transfer information to

llamas seeks the destruction of Palestinian
property, compels civilians to sustain injuries
and death, inflates casualty figures and may
even intentionally attack its own territory
— while the IDF takes gratuitous fatalities
to spare harm to Palestinians. The Israeli
government goes further, providing medical
care and food and sending technicians into
harm's way to make sure that Gazans con-
tinue to enjoy free electricity
It's a curious war in which Hamas cel-
ebrates Palestinian misery and Israel does
its best to keep life normal for its enemy.
Strange, indeed, but this is the nature of
modern warfare, where op-eds often carry
more weight than bullets. In Clausewitzian
terms, war's center of gravity has moved
from the battlefield to public relations.
In all, the civilized and moral forces of
Israel came off well in this face-off with bar-
barism. But not well enough to forestall, for
too long, yet another assault.

Stuart Winer
Times of Israel

A photo released by the IDF shows a Hamas tunnel
discovered by soldiers in the Northern Gaza Strip on
July 18.

Israel on the tunnels was killed by the military wing," a dif-
ferent source said. "They were very cruel:'
In 2012, a Journal of Palestine Studies article claimed 160
Palestinian children were killed while working on Hamas'
tunnel system.
The digging of tunnels began four years ago and has
demanded 40 percent of Hamas' budget, The Times of Israel
has learned.
Tunnel diggers have been using electric or pneumatic
jackhammers, advancing 4-5 meters a day. The tunnels
found were reportedly mostly dug 18-25 meters (60-82
feet) underground, though one was discovered at a depth
of 35 meters (115 feet). "That's like a 10-story building
underground," one expert said.
Digging requires engineering and geological expertise,
with tunnels usually dug through sandy soil, their roof sup-
ported by a more durable level of clay.
As they are dug, the tunnels are reinforced by concrete
panels, manufactured locally in workshops adjacent to each
tunnel. These workshops have also been targeted by the
IDF throughout its military operation.

Times of Israel's Elhanan Miller contributed to this report.

T

he Israel Defense Forces is set to conduct field
trials with two technologies that it hopes will
prove successful at revealing tunnels, offering a
possible means to detect subterranean passages dug by
Hamas under the border with Gaza, a senior army offi-
cer revealed on Monday.
Both systems have already passed laboratory tests,
paving the way to more extensive trials that are already
being set up, revealed the officer, who was not named,
Israel Hayom reported.
If the tests prove that the systems work, it would take
about a year to install them all along the border with the
Gaza Strip, at a cost of $430-$720 million, he estimated.
The IDF official explained that, in recent years, more
than 700 ideas have been tested in thousands of trials
to find a solution for detecting tunnels, but that they
all failed. The two projects that are now facing more-
extensive tests also failed in the past, but have since been
improved to the point of offering a realistic solution.
He added that a physical barrier would be installed
where the geology makes it suitable and around sensi-
tive locations, while the technologies would involve a
two- or three-layer solution that is connected with the
ability to detect, through different methods, the tunnel-
ing or when there is movement in the tunnel.
The IDF representative continued that the hope is that
such precautions will curtail the motivation to dig tun-
nels in the first place.

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August 14 • 2014

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