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Hamas Fighters Show Defiance In Gaza Tunnel Tour
[Ynet] Terrorists say they feel at home in tunnels, vow to restock arsenal: 'In peace we make preparations, and in war we use what we have readied,' says one of them.
Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, fighters, clad in black and armed with assault rifles, navigated the dimly lit tunnel with ease, saying they felt at home in their network of underground passages in the Gazoo Strip.
| Ooooh, black -- scary! Photos at link. |
A rare tour that Hamas granted to a Rooters news hound, photographer and cameraman appeared to be an attempt to dispute Israel's claim that it had demolished all of the Islamist group's border infiltration tunnels in the Gazoo war.
| No, Israel claimed to have destroyed the tunnels which passed under the border into Israel. They saved the tunnels going to the Hamas' hospital headquarters for the next phase of fighting, should it come to that. In the meantime, let Hamas' black-clad fighters and their important senior men hide deep in the bowels of the earth, mourning the failed triple attack set for Rosh Hashanah: the intifada and coup in the West Bank, the tunnel kidnap-massacre, and the rain of missiles which was to have terrorized and smashed neighbourhoods as far as Tel Aviv. Instead they can't even negotiate a cease fire longer than five days while Gaza lies in rubble over their heads, poor pathetic things that they are. |
"We are speaking to you today from inside one of those tunnels, which Israel said it had destroyed. Our men are still operating in those tunnels prepared for all options," said a masked fighter from Hamas's Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.
| Y'all keep crouching in readiness, guys. By the time anything actually happens, your thigh muscles will be simply gorgeous. |
But driven, blindfolded, to the secret location in a Hamas vehicle that made a series of turns, it was impossible for the Rooters crew to tell whether it was close to the frontier or further inside the Gazoo Strip in tunnels untouched by Israeli bombing. It was not clear where the tunnel led.
| But the betting money's on "not to Israel"... |
By Israel's own account, its ground forces focused only on destroying tunnels within 2 to 4.5 km of the border, while ignoring more distant connecting passages. During the Gazoo offensive, Israel's military took news hounds through tunnels it discovered at the frontier.
Chatting in soft voices and laughing at times, Hamas men guided the Rooters crew through corridors less than a metre (3.3 feet) wide that are reached by descending a thin metal ladder through a tiny shaft.
| The chat can be heard on the video, also at the link. Click on the article headline to watch and listen. And translate, if you happen to know Arabic, dear Reader. |
"It feels just like home," their commander said. "Fighters dug these tunnels with their own hands just like they built their houses, so they live here at comfort and assurance like they do at home."
| Did they? I thought it was small children, 160 of whom had died in the doing, and hired diggers, quite a few of whom were killed when the war was going badly. Dead men tell the Shin Bet no tales, donchaknow. Live ones, however, have shared quite a bit. Which will make the next phase of things a good deal more interesting for Gaza than originally planned. |
Sound of silence
The ceiling in parts of the tunnel was high enough so we could walk through - alternately on dry, concrete floors and muddy ground - without having to bend our heads.
It was impossible to gauge the tunnel's length, but it had offshoots leading in different directions. Once inside, the sounds of traffic and Israeli drones that routinely fly over the territory of 1.8 million people could not be heard.
Israel said the tunnel network is used by Hamas to move and store weapons and keep fighters out of sight of Israeli aircraft.
It is separate from smuggling conduits that ran under the Egypt-Gazoo border. Egypt, which regards Hamas as a security threat, destroyed those tunnels before the current war.
Israel launched its Gazoo offensive on July 8 after a surge in Hamas rocket fire across the border. Israeli ground forces invaded on July 17 with the declared aim of destroying infiltration tunnels and left on August 5 after saying that mission had been accomplished.
| Even Rooters reporters are not fooled by Hamas claims of what Israel said... |
Egypt is trying to finalize a long-term ceasefire after a five-day truce was extended by 24 hours into Tuesday, a truce that was broken several hours before it was set to expire when Paleostinian factions in Gazoo resumed rocket fire on Israel.
On the battlefield, Hamas met Israeli forces with an array of tactics, including the use of tunnels to launch surprise attacks. The IDF lost 64 soldiers, more than six times the number of troops killed in its previous invasion of Gazoo in early 2009. Three civilians in Israel were also killed.
| The ratio of 64 IDF to 1,000 terrorists does not bode well for Gaza in future interactions, for all the families of the dead 'fighters' will rejoice in the pensions they receive, paid by generous Qatar. |
Israel says it has killed hundreds of Hamas fighters and destroyed more than 30 tunnels. Funeral marches were held for several members of the Qassam Brigades but there has been no official word from the group on its losses.
The Paleostinian Health Ministry puts the Gazoo corpse count at 2,016 and says most were civilians in the small, densely populated coastal territory.
| Yes, but others have looked into those numbers, drawing a different conclusion. |
In the tunnel, a Hamas fighter said the group would press on with restocking its arsenal or rockets and other weaponry and shoring up its underground network.
"In peace we make preparations, and in war we use what we have readied," he said.
| Which next time -- or perhaps this time -- will be so much less than in the round just completed. |
Posted by: trailing wife 2014-08-20 |
