Israel Readying Risky Plan To Flood Miles Of Gaza's 'Terror Tunnels' With Sea Water
Israel's military has reportedly put in place controversial and high risk plans to flood Gaza's vast network of underground tunnels used by Hamas with sea water. High powered pumps have already been set up at key locations in the Gaza Strip.
The plan is to force Hamas militants above ground or else drown them, utilizing a series of pumps to pull water from the Mediterranean Sea, which are expected to provide enough water to fully flood the tunnels within weeks. According to details in The Wall Street Journal, US defense officials have been briefed on the 'option' - and with pumps now in place - but it's not believed that the Israelis have pulled the trigger on it yet.
"The Israel Defense Forces finished assembling large seawater pumps roughly one mile north of the Al-Shati refugee camp around the middle of last month," the report indicates. "Each of at least five pumps can draw water from the Mediterranean Sea and move thousands of cubic meters of water per hour into the tunnels, flooding them within weeks."
Some US officials were cited as expressing "concern" about the plan, also given the potential to kill more civilians and further destroy the Strip's infrastructure. A prime issue is that some 137 Israeli and foreign hostages remain in Hamas captivity after the end of last week's ceasefire and prisoner swap deal.
Very likely all or many of them are being kept somewhere within the tunnel system and its cavernous rooms. Hamas even has subterranean offices and command centers within. Israel has thus far identified at least 800 tunnels, but believes the network is still much bigger than what's known.
"We are not sure how successful pumping will be since nobody knows the details of the tunnels and the ground around them," one unnamed security source told the WSJ. "It’s impossible to know if that will be effective because we don’t know how seawater will drain in tunnels no one has been in before."
They'll just blame it on climate change.