Israel’s Tunnel-Detection Success Poses Hard Choice for Hamas
6th May 2016
In recent days, violence out of Gaza has indeed escalated significantly, and the trigger has been a succession of breakthroughs in the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) ability to detect cross-border assault tunnels that threaten Israel’s south.
On Thursday morning, the IDF announced that it had found a tunnel 30 meters (98 feet) underground that reached into southern Israel, not far from where the IDF used new breakthrough technology to locate another tunnel in April.
Realizing it is about to lose its most prized offensive weapon against Israel – the ability to inject murder squads in Israeli territory though tunnels – Hamas’s military wing decided to do something it has not done in almost two years. It began a succession of cross-border mortar attacks in the vicinity, with a view to disrupting the detection work, and more importantly, to signal to Israel that Hamas is willing to risk war over its tunnel program.