Israel is considering flooding Hamas’ network of underground tunnels in Gaza with seawater as part of its plan to completely destroy the terror group that rules the Palestinian territories, according to a report.
The Israel Defense Forces are assembling at least five pumps that can be used to draw water from the Mediterranean Sea to then dump the tunnel within weeks, US officials told the Wall Street Journal.
The army completed the system, built about a mile north of the Al-Shati refugee camp, around the middle of last month, according to the newspaper. Each pump has the power to move thousands of cubic meters of water per hour into at least 800 tunnels used by Hamas to move through Gaza undetected.
Israel has not yet decided whether to use the pumps, which could threaten Gaza’s already scarce water supply and infrastructure, the official said. It is also unclear whether the Jewish state will flood the tunnels before the release or rescue of the remaining Israeli hostages who may be held in the underground passages.
The IDF has not decided whether to go ahead with the plan to flood the Hamas tunnels but has not yet ruled it out. AP
US officials who spoke to the WSJ said they did not know how close Israel was to a decision, but said it had not ruled it out.
Some questions still surround the feasibility and potential impact of such a plan, the official said.
“We are not sure how successful the pumping will be because no one knows the details of the tunnel and the land around it,” a person familiar with the plan told the publication. “It’s impossible to know if it will work because we don’t know how seawater will flow in a tunnel that no one has ever been through before.”
Saltwater flooding has the potential to have a negative impact on Gaza’s already very limited water supply and infrastructure on the ground. via REUTERS
It is also not clear what effect the sea water through the tunnel will have on the clean water supply or the very limited infrastructure in Gaza which is located above the underground route.
“It is difficult to know what pumping sea water will do to the existing water and sewage infrastructure. It’s hard to know what it will do to groundwater reserves. And it’s hard to tell the impact on the stability of nearby buildings,” Jon Alterman, senior vice president at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the WSJ.
Gazans depend on three Israeli pipelines for clean water, but the war has closed one and limited operations to two others. Palestinians in the territory now get just three liters of water a day – a fifth of the daily minimum recommended by the UN, the newspaper reported.
Flooding the tunnels could also contaminate the soil with hazardous materials from inside the tunnels, adding to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza caused by the war.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
