The ground assault on Gaza is now well underway and, as they advance into the Strip’s urban areas, the Israel Defence Forces are coming up against an elusive enemy that has been preparing for this conflict for years. For Hamas’s military wing, a key part of those preparations has been the construction of a large network of tunnels which it can use to move fighters from location to location to mount hit and run attacks and vanish again.
Destroying this network is one of the key objectives of what Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu says is the “second phase” of this campaign. Known as the “Gaza Metro”, this comprises an estimated 300 miles of tunnels, some as deep as 70 metres underground. The network has been under development for years, but construction was stepped up when Israel relaxed its embargo on the shipment of building supplies into Gaza in 2012.
