The successful rescue of a hostage in Gaza earlier today by Israeli forces is a moment for celebration. A 52-year-old Bedouin Israeli, Farhan al-Qadi is the father of 11 children, one of whom was only a month old when Qadi was taken. Images and videos show his large family coming to the hospital to reunite with him in waves, simultaneously packing the waiting room and Qadi’s hospital room. “I can’t explain this feeling, it’s better even than the arrival of a new baby,” Qadi’s brother said.
It is also a moment for sober reflection; more than 100 hostages remain in Hamas’s bloody hands.
Finally, it’s a moment for a reality check. Those Hamas tunnels aren’t for show; they remain operational and must continue to be a focus of the war and its attendant diplomacy. Pundits and commentators have had particular trouble with this one.
Former British paratrooper Andrew Fox recently embedded with an IDF division in Rafah. The soldiers of that division alone, he recounts, “have found ten tunnel-hidden rocket launching sites, 21 subterranean weapons production sites, and they have destroyed 200 tunnel entry shafts.” Unsurprising, but still notable, “each one of those tunnel shafts led to a mosque; a school; a person’s home. To destroy the tunnel system, there is inevitable damage to the buildings under which the tunnels run and to which they are connected.”
The entrances to those tunnels are booby-trapped; the IDF has to enter with drones first, then dogs, then small groups of soldiers. Because Hamas can still remotely detonate IEDs and has cameras in the homes, the IDF often must destroy the structure once it discovers that live IEDs have been left behind. Hence the high level of damage above Rafah despite the low level of fatalities. (The population has been moved so Rafah can be cleared.)
Fox sums up: “Hamas has turned the whole place into one giant booby trap.”
This gives a good picture of Hamas’s uniquely evil existence. The terror group has destroyed Gaza, it’s as simple as that. It also means structural surface damage can’t be avoided in most cases. Those tunnels are not municipal water pipes, they cannot be left unsearched and intact.
Qadi’s ordeal is a reminder of that fact. The hostages are moved around underground and often held there as well. Yahya Sinwar can, of course, simply release the hostages and surrender. He has instead insisted on the war’s continuation, and this is what that looks like.
But the tunnels aren’t only for hostages. The tunnels, in fact, are at the center of the ceasefire negotiations. Israeli troops have secured the Gaza side of the Philadelphi corridor and the tunnels leading from Rafah to Egypt. It is not hyperbole to say that those specific tunnels are the reason for the perpetual state of hostilities and the regularity of war between Israel and Hamas. Without them, Hamas would be unable to rearm and resupply in perpetuity, to say nothing of the opportunity the corridor presents to move terrorists into and out of the war zone.
Militarily speaking, logically speaking, it is nothing less than insane to ask the Israelis to relinquish the corridor without some demonstrable way to maintain its deactivation process. Leaving the corridor in the hands of Hamas and Egypt means war; sealing the corridor is the only possible path to peace.
Yet the pressure on Israel to abandon the corridor continues. The Biden administration has convinced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to redeploy some troops from part of the corridor, in the hopes that Hamas will accept those terms and agree to the ceasefire. So far, Hamas won’t agree to anything that leaves the IDF in “operational control” of the corridor.
So let’s put in plain English what the fight over the tunnels is really about. Israel is asking for a commitment to long-term peace, and Hamas and its patrons are proposing permanent war. We can attempt to elide those differences all we want, but it won’t change the fundamental issue of these negotiations—and of the wider war.
You are either for Hamas rearmament or you are against it. You are either for the continued taking and holding of hostages or you are against it. The tunnels are the instruments of rearmament and hostage taking. The Israeli-Palestinian future depends on their dismantlement.
