In Gaza, the tunnels lead to death [View All]

[Herschel]

Palestinians say they're for smuggling
Israelis fear they're a weapons conduit


Tunnel talk is dangerous in this southernmost slice of the Palestinian territories.

It can get you shot, it can get you killed, and it can cause the wholesale erasure of entire neighbourhoods, lost in the jaws of Israeli armoured bulldozers.

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A total of 42 such tunnels were bombed to oblivion in the last year alone, the Israeli Defence Force says. But Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the army says, are digging new and evermore sophisticated tunnels at just as frantic a pace.

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That devastation — entire hectares of ramshackle refugee homes peeled away by the massive D9 bulletproof bulldozers — is the first thing one notices on a walkabout of the Palestinian side. Homes that were once embedded deep within the series of camps nearest to the border now find themselves on the front line, everything else between them and Egypt peeled away by months of periodic Israeli incursions.

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Israeli action in search of tunnels, Adam admitted, cannot be described as high technology. For the past several months, the IDF has taken to sinking holes with a drill platform and filling them with explosives at random distances along the borderline. The ensuing blast creates a miniature earthquake the IDF hopes will collapse any nearby tunnels.

"The bottom line? There's nothing like intelligence. We rely on information provided by Palestinians. And when there is any hint of a tunnel, we act."

One such action, last Dec. 21, cost Salah Abu Taha his life's work. The owner of two adjacent five-storey apartment blocks in Rafah's Brazil Camp neighbourhood heard the rumbling of tanks and armoured personnel carriers at 7:30 p.m. A moment later, he and his tenants were told they had exactly 10 minutes to leave the buildings for good.

"We managed to take our documents," Abu Taha, 65, told the Star, waving a binder of papers at the home of his brother, where he and his family took refuge. "Everything else was lost. They exploded my buildings."

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A fascinating article on Israel battling terror. Again, we see the value of the much maligned bulldozers and explosives. At times, only strong measures are effective.