The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed Tuesday that it is flooding some of the Hamas terror tunnels in the Gaza Strip with seawater, while taking care to avoid those tunnels where it believes the remaining Israeli hostages are being held.
In December, as Breitbart News reported, IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi suggested that Israel might flood some of the tunnels, saying that it sounded like a “good idea.” Subsequently, it was reported that the IDF had run a successful test of the proposal.
The Times of Israel reported Monday that the IDF says it is flooding some of the tunnels in an attempt to destroy them:
The Israel Defense Forces said Tuesday that it had been flooding some tunnels in the Gaza Strip with seawater, confirming what had been an open secret for several weeks.
Several IDF units and officials at the Defense Ministry jointly developed “several tools for injecting high-flow water into Hamas tunnels in the Gaza Strip,” the military said in a statement, adding that it is “part of the variety of tools the IDF has for dealing with tunnels.”
The IDF clarified that not all tunnels were being flooded, as the process, which includes attaching pipes and pumps to the shafts, was not suited to all the tunnels and could severely damage some areas.
The New York Times reported in mid-January that the Hamas tunnel network was far more extensive than had previously been known, and extended for 350-400 miles, with 5,700 tunnel shafts. Not one of the tunnels is a bomb shelter for civilians.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the 2021 e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now updated with a new foreword. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
