The option had been discussed for several months, but now it has been implemented: the Israeli army admitted on Tuesday that it had flooded Hamas tunnels in the Gaza Strip, one of the most important tactical targets of the war.
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Israeli forces, embroiled in a violent urban war for months, regularly say they are fighting an enemy on the surface and underground, forcing them to access their network to track the Palestinian Islamist movement.
“Large volumes of water” are being directed into tunnels, the army said in a statement, “as part of a range of tools used (…) to neutralize the network threat.”
Dubbed the “Gaza Metro,” the labyrinth of galleries that Hamas built under the Gaza Strip, known by Israel, was first used to bypass the Israeli-imposed blockade after the movement seized power in the area in 2007.
Tunnels have been dug beneath Egypt's Sinai border to transport people, goods and weapons between Gaza and the outside world.
But after the 2014 war between Israel and Hamas, the movement expanded the network from which its fighters can emerge to fire their rockets at Israel before returning to hide. An institute at the American Military Academy West Point mentioned 1,300 galleries over 500 km in a study in October.
The Israeli army, for its part, claimed at the beginning of December to have discovered more than 800 tunnel exits, 500 of which were destroyed.
In addition to the trap the tunnels pose for Israeli soldiers, several Israeli hostages released during the November ceasefire said they were being held there.
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The labyrinth of concrete corridors, equipped with kitchens with access to water, is a real obsession of the Israeli army, which uses it to justify its bombing of numerous hospitals and other civilian buildings that supposedly hide tunnels.
Last Saturday, the army brought a group of journalists into the heart of the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunis to show what was said to be a former underground command center at the site of a cemetery. The neighborhood was completely destroyed, AFP reported.
“professional”
On Tuesday, the army said the flooding of the tunnels was “professionally designed, including analysis of soil and pipe properties” to ensure groundwater was not harmed.
A way to anticipate possible criticism of the consequences of this method for the civilian population, which has been plunged into a humanitarian hell since the end of October after almost four months of Israeli bombing and intense ground fighting.
The war was sparked by the Hamas attack on Israeli soil on October 7, which killed around 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures.
About 250 people were kidnapped and taken to the Gaza Strip, including about 100 who were released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. According to Israel, 132 hostages remain held in Gaza, including 28 suspected dead.
In response, Israel vowed to “destroy” Hamas and launched a military operation that left 26,751 people dead, the vast majority of them civilians, according to the latest report from the Palestinian movement's health ministry.
In late 2023, local media cited Israeli sources saying the army planned to flood the galleries with seawater pumped from the Mediterranean off the small coastal area.
Army chief Herzi Halevi thought it was “a good idea.” But some scientists and humanitarian workers told AFP they feared contamination of the water table.
The Gaza Strip is between six and twelve kilometers wide, and groundwater salinization is already a scourge there, made worse by rising sea levels. Added to this is a chronically faulty wastewater disposal network and the uncontrolled use of pesticides and herbicides.
In November, the UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories said she feared for the quality of water, including for “future generations.”
Lynn Hastings, who has since left her post, added that the method risked “endangering the very fragile ecosystem of the Gaza Strip.”