The IDF is in a "race against time" to locate and destroy tunnels between the Gaza border fence and the Yellow Line, before diplomatic factors bring operations to a halt, security sources told Walla on Monday.
The army has reinforced engineering units in Gaza and expanded earthworks across the buffer area, the officials said. The effort includes fortifying existing outposts, improving defenses along the Yellow Line and the border fence, demolishing structures above ground, and, most intensively, locating and demolishing tunnels.
A security source said this week, “The scale of the IDF’s engineering equipment, in line with the number of tunnel-search focal points in the Gaza Strip, indicates the huge intelligence gap that preceded the war regarding the entire tunnel world of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.”
The source added, “Military Intelligence did not fully understand how Hamas integrated the different types of tunnels in different areas as a foundation of its combat doctrine on the one hand and a way of life on the other. We did not understand the size of the project and the importance Hamas attributed to the tunnels, and what is happening now is an attempt to close the gap, to locate these tunnels and destroy a massive project of decades.”
Previous reporting by The Jerusalem Post cites IDF officials believing early on in the war that around 75% of the tunnels in Gaza were destroyed, only to later change that estimate to around 25% of terror tunnels.
An engineering official taking part in tunnel-detection missions said, “In recent weeks, there is a feeling that we are working against time, that every hour is precious, as if at any moment we are about to be stopped due to diplomatic processes, and therefore activity in the field is very intensive and precise. We are really trying to concentrate our efforts.”
An IDF source told Walla, “We are operating in several sectors, also along the defensive line, the fence line opposite the communities in Israel. There are places where the distance from the border to the Yellow Line is 11 km into the Gaza Strip, in some places, Khan Yunis and Rafah.”
Another mission, the officer said, is “to locate the trapped enemy in eastern Rafah,” referring to terrorists still in underground tunnels beyond the Yellow Line.
“We are methodically, step by step, destroying the enemy that remains there. In our assessment, there are a few dozen terrorists in Rafah’s Jenina neighborhood. We do not know their condition, whether they are alive or dead, but the actions we are carrying out there will destroy them. We assess that activity there is nearing completion.”
On tunnel-detection, the official said, “We are carrying out engineering operations, some accompanied by explosives, with engineering tools and so on. We are working in a very systematic way. The goal is to destroy all the infrastructure in the area under our control. The order of priorities is clear. First of all, tunnels, including the core mainlines. After that, to organize the area so they can defend it better. And of course, we are now making use of every minute we have while we are still on the Yellow Line, holding and defending such a line, because we do not know what tomorrow will bring. You know, in a second, they can tell us, Phase II has arrived.”