How tunnels shaped Gaza’s survival

Tunnels have had a key role in the history of Gaza during the strip's last 17 years. Tunnels have enabled Palestinian fighters to resist Israel's invasion of Gaza following the surprise October 7th, 2023, above ground attack on southern Israel by Hamas, there are said to be 360-500 kilometres of tunnels in the complex which runs below Gaza's towns, cities and refugee camps. Wide main tunnels high enough for standing have been buried in deep within the earth and surfaced with concrete. They have branches which extend the scope of the tunnel network. The tunnels contain internal communications networks, plumbing, electricity, storage areas for supplies and arsenals. Tunnels have enabled lightly armed Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters to survive attacks by Israeli troops, warplanes and tanks as well as shelling, and aerial bombardments and mount guerrilla raids against Israeli soldiers. Tunnels are not demonic installations but the means to mount self-defence by Palestinians armed with smuggled guns and homemade rockets and unguided bombs.

In a 2014 interview with Vanity Fair magazine, Qatar-based Hamas' politburo chief Khaled Mashaal said the tunnels were not meant to mount attacks against Israeli civilians. He said, "Please note when we used these tunnels. We used them when Israel waged war against us." While Israel called them "offensive tunnels”, but he retorted, “in actual fact they are defensive ones. If those were offensive tunnels, Hamas would have used them before the (2014 50-day) war. But, when Israel carried out its aggression against us, we used the tunnels to infiltrate behind the rear lines of the Israeli army, which [was] waging war on Gaza."

He told Vanity Fair that war was "imposed on us and we simply defended ourselves”. He blamed the war on then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who, "because of his Cabinet's internal problems and because of the public anger against him, opted to escalate the situation in Gaza". Mashaal's words apply to Netanyahu now as then. He has expanded operations, escalated and prolonged the war for the very same reasons he made war on Gaza a decade ago.

While Hamas launched the attack which elicited Israel's ongoing deadly and devastating war against Gaza and Lebanon, Israel has turned the strip into a graveyard and wasteland and threatened to do the same to Lebanon. This is hardly self-defence and amounts to a disproportionate offensive, which is banned by international laws of war.

From Hamas' takeover of Gaza in June 2007 until 2013, Palestinians used smuggling tunnels under the Egyptian border at Rafah in the south to mitigate the impact on Gaza of Israel's blockade. It imposed cruelly calculated Israeli limitations on imports. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, more than 1,500 tunnels were constructed.

They transferred into Gaza arms and all manner of civilian goods: Vehicles, food, fuel, medical supplies, livestock, cement, fertiliser, equipment and seed. The tunnels granted freedom of movement to Gazans who had been trapped in the strip by Israel and the closure of Egypt's Rafah crossing. Tunnels served people who needed to leave Gaza or had been locked out. The volume of the tunnel trade was larger than commerce through Israeli crossings. The free import of cement and building materials enabled Gazans to rebuild within five years 6,000 housing units destroyed by Israel's 2008-2009 war on Gaza. If Gazans had to rely on the amount of construction material Israel allowed in, rebuilding would have taken 80 years. Gaza's fuel import tunnels carried around 1 million litres per day to run Gaza's only power plant. Some tunnels were high and wide enough to allow people to drive cars through. Cows, horses and zoo animals were brought into Gaza through tunnels intended for livestock.

A tunnel economy emerged, boosting the GDP of Gaza. Tunnel construction, maintenance and operation provided employment for thousands of previously jobless Gazans. This, unfortunately, included children who risked their lives while pushing forward into small, tight spaces. Middle class Gazans thrived. Some 1,800 tunnel owners became millionaires. Cafes and libraries sprung up all over Gaza. During afternoon tea with university-educated young Palestinians I asked what they wanted to do with their lives. They were largely upbeat, believing that the tunnel miracle could last. They were encouraged when repeated Israel attacks on tunnels destroyed dozens which were soon rebuilt or replaced. Hamas taxed tunnel imports and used the revenue to pay salaries to administrators and carry out infrastructure projects, strengthening its hold on power and disconcerting the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, which also sought an end to the tunnels despite the cost to the wellbeing of Gazans.

On the Egyptian side, Sinai Bedouin gained from tunnel trade, but Cairo struggled to stop smuggling. A subterranean barrier constructed along the border was soon breached by tunnel owners and users. After the fall of the Mubarak government in 2011, the Egyptian army made a concerted effort to close smuggling tunnels, but this eased with the 2012-mid-2013 presidency of the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi. After his ouster, the Egyptian army destroyed 1,659 tunnels, plunging Gaza into economic crisis, depriving Gazans of tunnel benefits and freedoms and making Gazans dependant once again on Israel, which reinstated its blockade.

At the height of tunnel traffic, a friend of mine, a doctor with a large family, brought into Gaza enough Egyptian cement and other materials to construct a small block of flats for himself and his wife, children and their children. He was very proud of this achievement. On October 15th last year, an Israeli bomb killed him, his wife, a daughter and five grandchildren and destroyed their tunnel-gifted homes.