The Peace Processors Return, Having Learned Nothing from Their Mistakes
Among Western opinionmakers and policy experts—even those supportive of Israel in its war against Hamas—there is a widely held belief that after the fighting ends, Washington must renew efforts to get Israel and the Palestinians to agree to a two-state solution. Daniel Kurtzer and Aaron David Miller, both former State Department officials, recently made such a case in Foreign Affairs, despite the repeated failures of this approach, and the bloodstained results. Elliott Abrams comments:Inside the tunnels of Gaza
Our two peace processors . . . acknowledge that “addressing legitimate Israeli security concerns” must be part of the picture—but they give no sense of what they think those concerns might be and how they might be “addressed.” They acknowledge that “even if Netanyahu leaves office, no other current top politician in Israel appears eager to embark down a path of peace. And there are no Palestinian leaders with the gravitas and political weight to engage seriously with Israel in the aftermath of the conflict.” But they do not draw the obvious conclusion from those two sentences: well, okay, so that’s dead. . . .
From everything we can see about Palestinian politics and public opinion, basing Israeli security on dreams about Palestinian pacifism is nuts. Moreover, Iran has under way a vast effort to build proxy forces and strengthen every terrorist group—from the Houthis to Hizballah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad to Hamas—to attack Israel by stocking the groups with guns and money. That is the problem with the two-state solution: no one can explain how a sovereign and independent Palestinian state will not constitute a grave security threat to Israel (and Jordan as well, by the way). Kurtzer and Miller certainly don’t explain it; like all the peace processors, they wish it away, conjuring up a mythical Palestine that loves peace. If you believe, clap your hands!
This is going to be a hard sell in Israel. It ought to be an equally hard sell in Washington.
The types of sandy or loamy soils common in Gaza made it both easier for Hamas to excavate the tunnels and harder for Israel to destroy them, two experts said.Expert: Hezbollah has built a vast tunnel network far more sophisticated than Hamas’s
The three main types of soil in the 365 sq. km. enclave are:
An illustration of the three types of soil in the Gaza Strip: Dune sand, loess, fluvial and eolian, and calcareous sandstone.
Even in the trickier areas - such as the dunes near the Mediterranean coast that are prone to water infiltration - Hamas had enough building materials and resources to adjust to the type of soil they were dealing with, said Professor Joel Roskin, a geomorphologist and geologist with Israel's Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv, who has studied the tunnel network.
“What we've seen is that there are so many tunnels that have been reinforced with concrete,” Roskin said, adding that Hamas had invested considerable money and manpower in construction.
“To dig deeper demands more resources, more energy. The deeper tunnels are of course more difficult to detect.”
A map of the major exposed rock types across Israel and Gaza. Alluvium (gravel, sand, silt, clay, and rock), sand, and calcareous sandstone, red sandstone, and loam are the types found in the Gaza Strip. In the east, towards Jerusalem, the area is predominantly covered by chalk, limestone, dolostone, and chert. Next to the map sits two charts visualizing a cross section of the rock layers below the surface. One for the Nirim area in the Gaza Strip and another for the area surrounding Jerusalem.
John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute and a founding member of the International Working Group on Subterranean Warfare, said the sandy nature of the soil had certainly made it easier for Hamas.
“I have seen many videos of them digging by hand or using simple power tools,” he told Reuters. “The soil is conducive to rapid and unskilled digging.” By contrast, he said, the Lebanese Shi’ite group Hezbollah had to dig through solid rock in south Lebanon to build cross border tunnels into northern Israel.
Hezbollah has not confirmed the existence of the tunnel network but, in 2019, the Israeli military put on display one tunnel that, it said, reached depths of 80 meters (265 feet) as it ran from a kilometer inside Lebanon into Israel near Zar’it in the Upper Galilee.
The relative softness of the soil in Gaza is also a disadvantage to the IDF teams seeking to clear and destroy the network, Spencer said.
“The loose soil actually reduces the IDF use of explosives to destroy tunnels as the soft soil absorbs explosive force. Add the blast doors in the tunnels we’ve seen, and that further reduces the effects of explosive force traveling through the tunnel.”
An illustration showing the steps for building a tunnel. Initial excavation is usually done manually, with the help of shovels and other tools. In areas where the terrain is tougher, pneumatic hammers are utilized. Lastly, the illustration shows that as progress is made, the walls are reinforced with prefabricated cement or wood slabs.
On Nov. 22, the Israeli army showed some news organizations a concrete-lined tunnel near Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City that, it said, was a command post for Hamas fighters. The tunnel complex, which the IDF said was at a depth of around 10 meters below ground, featured a bedroom, a tiled bathroom, kitchen and meeting room.
Reuters photographer Ronen Zvulun went inside the tunnels. “The tunnel floor is sand but the walls and roof are lined with concrete, like a tiny road or train tunnel. And just about high enough for someone to stand upright.”
Two weeks ago, the IDF spokesman revealed one of the biggest attack tunnels in the Gaza Strip — four kilometers long, wide enough for vehicles to drive through, and running from Jabaliya, north of Gaza City, up until some 400 meters from the Erez border crossing into Israel.Israeli drone kills Hamas deputy chief al-Arouri in Beirut
While the tunnel did not cross the border, it presumably could have enabled terrorists on motorcycles and other vehicles to drive underground from the Jabaliya area and exit close to the border before IDF surveillance soldiers or patrols could block them. The IDF did not specify whether this was the case when 3,000 Hamas-led terrorists poured into Israel on October 7, slaughtering 1,200 people and abducting 240.
The uncovering of this vast tunnel, of which there are several more in Gaza, has revived discussion of similar tunnels near, at and under the Lebanon border — especially amid the ongoing clashes there with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorist army, the forced evacuation of tens of thousands of Israeli residents of the north, and the Israeli leadership’s repeated insistence that Hezbollah must be forced back from the border and deterred.
The Lebanon tunnel project was begun and developed long before the one in Gaza. Existing intelligence indicates a vast tunnel network in southern Lebanon, deep and multi-pronged.
At the Alma Research and Education Center, which focuses on the security challenges on Israel’s northern border, researchers have spent many years investigating Lebanon’s underworld. Tal Beeri, the director of Alma’s Research Department, who served for decades in IDF intelligence units, has exposed that subterranean network in material based on considerable open-source intelligence.
Several years ago, Beeri managed to track down on the internet a “map of polygons,” covering what he called the “Land of the Tunnels” in southern Lebanon. “The map is marked, by an unknown party, with polygons (circles) indicating 36 geographic regions, towns and villages,” he wrote in 2021 paper.
“In our assessment, these polygons mark Hezbollah’s staging centers as part of the ‘defense’ plan against an Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Each local staging center (‘defense’) possesses a network of local underground tunnels. Between all these centers, an infrastructure of regional tunnels was built, interconnected [with] them.”
Beeri assessed that the cumulative length of Hezbollah’s tunnel network in south Lebanon amounts to hundreds of kilometers.
In an interview, Beeri recalls that the research paper on Hezbollah’s “Land of the Tunnels” was published immediately after 2021’s Operation Guardian of the Walls — where the IDF had engaged in tackling Hamas’s underground “metro” in Gaza, an operation that in retrospect did not achieve its goal of destroying the tunnels in the enclave.
The paper also featured a map assessing the likely 45-kilometer route of one “attack tunnel” in south Lebanon.
An Israeli drone strike on a Hamas office in Beirut eliminated top terror chief Saleh al-Arouri on Tuesday night, Hamas’s Al-Aqsa Radio announced.
The explosion rocked the south Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh, a Hezbollah stronghold. In addition to al-Arouri, at least three other Hamas operatives were also killed in the blast, Reuters reported.
Al-Arouri, the commander of Hamas operations in Judea and Samaria, as well as the deputy politburo chief under Hamas chairman Ismail Haniyeh, had been based in Lebanon in recent years.
He was one of the top Hamas leaders on Israel’s target list following the terrorist group’s Oct. 7 massacre of at least 1,200 people in the northwestern Negev.
In a statement cited by Saudi Arabia’s Al Arabiya channel on Tuesday, Hamas described al-Arouri as the “architect” of the massacre.
Al-Arouri was informed of the impending invasion half an hour beforehand so he could alert Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, French outlet Le Figaro reported last week.
Local media said Nasrallah canceled a speech scheduled for Wednesday following the reports of al-Arouri’s death.
Israel is anticipating a response to the alleged assassination, according to Hebrew-language media, including possible long-range rocket fire.
During a Nov. 3 speech, Nasrallah threatened the Jewish state, telling Israelis that a preemptive strike against Lebanon would be “the most foolish mistake you make in your entire existence.”
The Hezbollah leader has repeatedly warned that any assassination in Lebanese territory would be met with a “strong reaction.”