Article

2020-10-25 Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Background on the latest Hamas cross-border tunnel destroyed by Israel

Taken from a longer Legal Insurrection article about the discovery of the tunnel reported here a few days ago.

Military sources said the tunnel was detected by sensors in the concrete subterranean barrier that Israel has been building around Hamas-run Gaza...Work on the barrier has been continuing for some four years, and some 60 kilometers of the barrier’s 65-km. length have been completed.

I didn’t realize the Israelis were so close to completion, while simultaneously improving barriers along the borders with Egypt in the south and Syria and Lebanon in the north.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the regime’s military and foreign terrorist wing, issued direct threats to the UAE, Bahrain, and others following the peace deals. Authorities in Bahrain reported the foiling of a major Iranian terror plot last month. IRGC-linked terrorists had planned attacks on diplomats and foreign nationals on Bahrain’s soil, Arab media reported.

Gaza-based Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, both Iran-funded terrorist outfits, have stepped up their operations in the peace agreements’ wake. Last month, Hamas and Hezbollah’s chiefs met in Beirut and pledged a terror alliance against Israel. Both groups agreed that Trump-brokered peace deals are a “strategic threat to Palestinian aspirations” and called for an alliance based on Islamic “brotherhood and Jihad” against the Jewish state.

Both Hamas and Hezbollah are developing their tunnel building capabilities. Legal Insurrection has reported the role played by Iran in these tunnel digging activities. In March 2016, we reported Iran’s hiring of the North Korean mining company “Korean Mining Development Company” to build Hezbollah’s underground terror infrastructure. A sophisticated Hezbollah cross-border tunnel network discovered and destroyed by the IDF in May 2019 included “contained railroads to transport equipment and garbage, and was equipped with lighting equipment, air-conditioning and ladders,” the Jerusalem Post reported.

Hamas alone spends $40 million annually on tunnels,

...which seems an awful lot, even if the annual Gaza economy includes $100 million in donations from Qatar alone...

a 2016 report estimated. Last year, a senior Hamas operative Hamza Abu Shanab admitted getting ‘direct financial aid’ from Iran for tunnel digging operations.