מבצע מים מלוכלכים (חלק רביעי)

"In the past, and even in most cases today, military tunnels and bunkers have been built specifically to gain a military advantage. They are used for smuggling, kidnapping, and invading or defending territory. Underground spaces enable militaries to conserve capabilities by avoiding detection and strike, to hold terrain by using the tunnels for mobile defense tactics, or even offensively to use guerrilla tactics to attrit the attacking force. 

For the first time in the history of tunnel warfare, however, Hamas has built a tunnel network to gain not just a military advantage, but a political advantage, as well. Its underground world serves all of the military functions described above, but also an entirely different one. Hamas weaved its vast tunnel networks into the society on the surface. Destroying the tunnels is virtually impossible without adversely impacting the population living in Gaza. Consequently, they put the modern laws of war at the center of the conflict's conduct. These laws restrict the use of military force and methods or tactics that a military can use against protected populations and sites such as hospitals, churches, schools, and United Nations facilities.

Almost all of Hamas's tunnels are built into civilian and protected sites in densely populated urban areas. Much of the infrastructure providing access to the tunnels is in protected sites. This complicates discriminating between military targets and civilian locations - if not rendering it entirely impossible - because Hamas does not have military sites separate from civilian sites. 

Hamas's strategy is also not to hold terrain or defeat an attacking force. Its strategy is about time. It is about creating time for international pressure on Israel to stop its military operation to mount. 

Hamas is globally known for using human shields, which is the practice of using civilians to restrict the attacker in a military operation. The group wants as many civilians as possible to be harmed by Israel military action - as one of its officials put it, 'We are proud to sacrifice martyrs.' It wants the world's attention on the question of whether the IDF campaign is violating the laws of war in attacking Hamas tunnels that are tightly connected to civilian and protected sites. It wants to buy as much time as is needed to cause the international community to stop Israel. Its entire strategy is built on tunnels . . . 

Hamas's strategy, then, is founded on tunnels and time. This war, more so than any other, is about the underground and not the surface. It is time-based rather than terrain- or enemy-based. Hamas is in the tunnels. Its leaders and weapons are in the tunnels. The Israeli hostages are in the tunnels. And Hamas's strategy is founded on its conviction that, for Israel, the critical resource of time will run out in the tunnels."

- John Spencer, "Gaza's Underground: Hamas's Entire Politico-Military Strategy Rests On Its Tunnels" (Excerpt), Modern War Institute at West Point, January 18, 2024 (See: https://mwi.westpoint.edu/gazas-underground-hamass-entire-politico-military-strategy-rests-on-its-tunnels/).