Avi Issacharoff, the creator of award-winning TV show 'Fauda', has described the complexities of the tunnels in Gaza, calling them 'dense' and something beyond imaginable.
Issacharoff, the Arabic-speaking Israeli journalist whose military services helped him create the Netflix series Fauda, was describing to reporters the challenges of a military operation in Gaza’s dense urban terrain.
"It’s very dense, it’s a huge system of tunnels that allow Hamas to transport terrorists and hostages — but also motorbikes and artillery and rockets and everything you can imagine," Issacharoff was quoted by The Times of Israel. He added that the tunnels cover almost the entire Gaza Strip, adding that the Hamas men went underground, under the houses of Gaza City.
Issacharoff added that one of Hamas strategy is to have two or three men "pop out" of a tunnel and fire an RPG at an approaching Israeli tank or armored vehicle. After firing, the gunmen head back into the tunnel.
He claimed that the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City’s downtown is the central location for the Hamas regime. Israel claims that its Defence Forces has documented Hamas’s use of underground areas beneath Shifa as an operations headquarters. It’s also where Hamas’s fuel reserves are stored.
"I swear, every kid in Gaza knows there’s a Hamas headquarters under Shifa, but no one talks about it," said Issacharoff, who wrote a 'Fauda' episode about Shifa back in 2018.
According to the CNN, the myriad tunnels under Gaza are used to smuggle goods from Egypt and launch attacks into Israel. There is also another underground network that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) colloquially refer to as the 'Gaza metro'.
In 2021, Hamas claimed to have 500 kilometers (311 miles) worth of tunnels under Gaza.
Experts believe what makes the tunnels in Gaza stand out from those created in Afghanistan or the Viet Cong in the jungles of Southeast Asia is that it is constructed above the most densely populated areas on the planet.
"It’s always difficult to deal with tunnels, don’t get me wrong, in any context, even when they are in a mountainous area, but when they are urban area, then everything is more complicated – the tactical aspects, strategic aspects, the operational aspects, and of course, the protection that you want to ensure for the civilian population," Richemond-Barak, a senior fellow at the Lieber Institute for Law and Land Warfare and the Modern War Institute at West Point, told CNN.
