According to the latest report by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are considering flooding Gaza City to destroy the network of Hamas tunnels dug underneath the city.
"A well-informed American official told me that the Israeli leadership is known to be considering flooding Hamas's vast tunnel system before sending in its troops, many of whom have had only a few weeks of training in the maneuvers and coordination required for the invasion," Hersh wrote. He noted that doing so means “writing off” the possibility of securing the return of some 200 Israeli hostages still in Hamas custody.
Israel has been pounding the Gaza Strip for more than two weeks, ever since Hamas militants broke through the Gaza border fence and massacred several Israeli villages near the border, killing more than 1,300 people. However, the IDF response has far outpaced the death toll in Israel, with nearly 6,000 dead and another 1,000 missing in the rubble across the Gaza Strip.
According to the IDF, the bombardment is in preparation for a ground invasion, for which it has amassed more than 300,000 troops. A previous attempt to invade Gaza and destroy Hamas’ tunnel network in 2014 resulted in grinding urban warfare that forced the IDF to withdraw after two weeks.
Retired IDF Lt. Col. Dr. Mordechai Kedar, who served for 25 years in IDF military intelligence specializing in Arab political discourse and is a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv, told Sputnik on Wednesday it would “definitely be cheaper to dig a tunnel a few hundred meters, which will stream the water from the sea,” than to expend the amount of ordinance it would require to destroy Hamas’ tunnel network in the city.
“It will be much cheaper and much more secure because once the city becomes a lake, nothing will remain as it was," he said.
“I don't know what Israel is preparing for these tunnels, whether it is bombs or water or whatever,” Kedar said. However, he described the feasibility of using bombs or channeling seawater to destroy the tunnel networks.
“Look, I really don't know what Israel has. However, Israel is receiving every day, I think, a cargo of ammunition from the United States of America. Maybe this cargo or that cargo is a few thousand bombs which are supposed to deal with these tunnels. I have no idea what they have. And look, take into account that some of the tunnels are very deep, like 30 meters deep, which is a ten-story-tall building. This is very deep. And I don't know what the specifications of these bombs are, and I have no idea if these bombs are in the cargo,” he said.
However, on the question of flooding the city, Kedar noted Gaza is likely below sea level, making it much easier to transport water into the city.
“It all depends on the quantity of water which we can bring into the city of Gaza. According to some data which I have read, the city actually is below sea level. If this is correct, it will not be so hard to make the water from the sea stream into the city. Once the city is covered with water, the water will go down into the ground because the ground is very sandy, and apparently all the tunnels will be flooded, and whoever is in these tunnels will have to swim out or be buried there forever.”
“If this data is right and the city is actually below sea level, all you have to do is to dig a little tunnel from the sea to a lower place in the city and, physics will do the job,” he said.
When asked about the potential for ecological disaster or other consequences for the urban infrastructure as a result of the IDF flooding Gaza, Kedar replied that “whoever started this war with us should have calculated it beforehand.”
“Unfortunately, this ISIS*-like organization, they do not make any calculations neither on human lives nor infrastructure. It seems they couldn't care less about their own people, in their own cities, in their own infrastructure. I think that we don't have to put so much attention to these questions.”
“Once the city becomes a lake, I think that the whole of the city is finished and the whole story is finished because it will be a lake. And then maybe this will be the change and this might be the lesson.”
**Daesh (also known as ISIS/ISIL/IS) is a terrorist organization outlawed in Russia and many other states.