[News] Israel Has Just Begun Flooding Gaza Tunnels - What It Means

[Anti-Imperialist News]

palestinechronicle.com
<https://www.palestinechronicle.com/israel-has-just-begun-flooding-gaza-tunnels-what-it-means/>
Israel Has Just Begun Flooding Gaza Tunnels - What It MeansDecember 12, 2023
------------------------------
Israel plans to pump seawater into Gaza tunnels. (Image: Social media)

*By Palestine Chronicle Editors
<https://www.palestinechronicle.com/writers/palestine-chronicle-editors>*

The Wall Street Journal reported that Israel has begun the process of
flooding the tunnels of Gaza. But will it work?

About ten years ago, the Egyptian military, at the behest of Washington and
Tel Aviv, began flooding
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/9/18/egypt-floods-gaza-tunnels-used-for-smuggling>
tunnels connecting the Gaza Strip to Egypt.

Back then, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi had just overthrown Egyptian President
Mohammed Morsi.

He needed much political capital to remain in power and to stave off any
potential US criticism, however superficial, for his overthrow of a
democratically-elected president.

To do so, Sisi needed to present himself to Washington as a reliable ally –
and the best way of doing so was to crack down on Palestinians, and their
Resistance.

Quickly, the US jumped onto the opportunity of supporting any Israeli
efforts aimed at further tightening the Israeli siege on Gaza.

In no time, Egypt began flooding the tunnels with sewage water. Aside from
the environmental disaster sewage water has caused,  this also led to the
death of many Palestinians, including people trying to escape the siege,
along with some of those involved in the thriving tunnel business.
*Siege and Tunnels *

Since 2007, Gaza has been under a hermetic Israeli siege. Egypt
participated in the siege by preventing Palestinians from using the Rafah
Crossing as an alternative route for commercial goods – food, fuel,
construction material, etc.

Also, Egypt has repeatedly shut down the Rafah Crossing, leaving thousands
of Palestinians stranded on both sides of the border.

With the destruction of the tunnels, one of the very few lifelines
remaining in the hands of the Palestinians in Gaza was severed. Their
besiegement of Palestinians was now complete.

But, judging from the events of October 7, and the strong Palestinian
Resistance in the Strip since then, it does not seem that the Resistance
itself was greatly affected by Egypt’s US-backed strategy of destroying the
Gaza tunnels using various strategies

Under the title “Floods and Bombs: This is How Egypt Handled Hamas’
Smuggling Tunnels”, the Israeli newspaper Yisrael Hayom was one of the many
Israeli media that made
<https://www.israelhayom.com/2023/10/22/floods-and-bombs-this-is-how-egypt-handled-hamas-smuggling-tunnels/>
the link between the Egyptian strategy and what they believe Israel should
be doing in Gaza at the moment.

On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported
<https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-takes-fight-against-hamas-to-vast-tunnel-network-2ed3b3f2>
that the Israeli army has in fact begun utilizing the Egyptian strategy,
namely pumping seawater into the Resistance tunnels.

Satellite images analyzed
<https://www.skynewsarabia.com/middle-east/1676863-%D8%A7%D9%95%D8%BA%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%82-%D8%A7%D9%94%D9%86%D9%81%D8%A7%D9%82-%D8%BA%D8%B2%D8%A9-%D8%A8%D8%AF%D8%A7%D9%94%D8%AA-%D8%A7%D9%95%D8%B3%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%8A%D9%94%D9%8A%D9%84-%D8%AA%D9%86%D9%81%D9%8A%D8%B0-%D8%AE%D8%B7%D8%AA%D9%87%D8%A7%D8%9F>
by various media organizations, including NBC News, have shown massive
water pipes starting at the Mediterranean Sea and ending in various parts
of the coast of the Gaza Strip.
*War Crime *

While the Americans are, expectedly, enthusiastic about the idea of
flooding the Gaza tunnels as a last resort of defeating the Resistance,
others have warned against such a step.

Dmitry Polianskiy, the First Deputy Permanent Representative of Russia to
the UN, for example, has warned that flooding the underground of Gaza with
seawater is a war crime.

War crime because it would pollute an already highly salinized underground
water in Gaza, as well as irreversibly damage the environment.

Additionally, according to Polianskiy, many Palestinian civilians are most
likely hiding underground to escape the horrors of the Israeli war, which
has, so far, killed over 18,000 people.

*Desperate Measures*

Palestinian writer and analyst Ramzy Baroud said that “flooding some of the
tunnels is in itself, as cruel as it is, an act of desperation, simply
because it is based on the erroneous understanding that the tunnel networks
are connected in such a way that flooding one tunnel in Beit Layha, in the
north, would somehow flood another in Rafah, in the south.”

“Due to the horrific tunnel-flooding experience by Egypt, and the
anticipation that Israel would certainly resort to such an option, the
Resistance tunnels are made in such a way that it would allow them to
accommodate even such desperate and cruel tactics,” Baroud added.

Indeed, while all sides of the Gaza tunnels are made of fortified concrete,
the ground is always left in its original material, basically compact sand
and dirt.

According to experts, the construction of the tunnel is made to accommodate
the possibility of intentional or natural flooding, which happens quite
often each winter in Gaza.

Moreover, the fact that Israelis, US and their Western allies have been
peddling the idea of flooding the tunnels as one of the main strategies in
defeating the Resistance, has given Palestinians enough time to prepare for
such eventuality.

“For Israel to succeed in flooding the tunnels, they would have to
establish full control over Gaza first, identify the location of all
tunnels, and start the process of slowly pumping seawater, which would take
months,” Baroud said, “a time that Israel does not have considering its
heavy losses due to the stiff Resistance in Gaza.”

*(The Palestine Chronicle) *
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20231212/85adfa31/attachment-0001.htm>