The Long History Of The Gaza Tunnels
During the current round of fighting in the Gaza Strip, Kareem, a 40-year-old Palestinian, witnessed a Hamas tunnel exposed.
"There is a chicken coop near us," said Kareem, who lives on the eastern edge of Gaza City, bordering on farmland. "We know it's a chicken coop."
But an Israeli attack, which destroyed the chicken house, revealed a tunnel heading east toward Israel, he said.
"We didn't know about it, but we faced a risk because of it," he said.
More than a risk. The Shejaiya neighborhood where he lives was the target of first Israeli airstrikes, then intense shelling shortly after the ground invasion started. Thousands of Gazans fled their homes.
The last word Kareem heard from neighbors who left after him was that his house, from where he used to be able to see the chicken coop, had been badly damaged, if not destroyed.
The Israeli military called Shejaiya "reknowned for terrorist activity" and said troops encountered significant resistance from militant fighters there.
This week, the military published a map showing six tunnels beginning in Shejaiya snaking under the double fence at the border, and into Israel.
This is one area Israeli leaders would likely try to keep troops on the ground as long as they are able, even during a ceasefire, to shut down militant activity, including tunnels.
"We're not willing for [Hamas] to come and meet us in our backyard," said IDF spokesman Peter Lerner. "We want to meet them in theirs."
Overall, Israel says its found more than 30 tunnels in Gaza since the fighting began.
A Long History Of Gaza Tunnels
Israel certainly had been aware of Gaza tunnels before this war. First, it's an ancient practice.
In his forthcoming book, Gaza: A History, Jean-Pierre Filiu describes the "first historic reference to the loose subsoil of Gaza" during Alexander the Great's 332 BC siege of this Mediterranean city, then under Persian rule.
Filiu writes that Alexander expected quick victory. But "the siege of Gaza involved 100 days of fruitless attacks and tunneling." When Gaza finally fell, Alexander was infuriated and went on a vengeful rampage.
In more recent times, Palestinians subverted Israeli controls over travel, imports and exports to and from the Gaza Strip by digging tunnels to south, into Egypt.
Cars, cows, and cigarettes came through what were commonly called smuggling tunnels, although Hamas taxed what it could after it came to power 2006. Cheap Egyptian gasoline kept Gaza going when Israel fuel was too expensive. Weapons and sometimes people travelled through those commercial tunnels too.
Hamas also used a tunnel from Gaza to enter Israel and kidnap an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, in 2006. He was held for five years, until Israel agreed to free more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.
The tunnels to Egypt have been largely shut down in the past year, following the ouster of Egyptian leader Mohammed Morsi, whose Muslim Brotherhood was sympathetic to Hamas. Under the current Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Egypt has bulldozed those tunnels, stifling the already weak Gazan economy.
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