2023-11-07 17:41:01
In an interview with RFI, security and defense analyst Jesús M. Pérez Triana, editor of the site guerrasposmodernas.com, explained what the network of tunnels that Hamas built under Gaza consists of, what can be expected from this technological race between Israel and the Palestinian armed group, and why the West Bank is a key point in this new war.
RFI: What can you tell us about the Hamas tunnels, what purpose do they have?
Jesús M. Pérez Triana: Israel has drones, it has aviation, which has always been important in its attacks. So, the response of Hamas and the other Palestinian organizations, but fundamentally Hamas, has been to put all of its infrastructure and all of its command centers, warehouses and hiding places for the rocket launchers with which it attacks Israel, underground. And this has been a technological race between Israel and the Palestinian organizations in the Gaza Strip, because Israel has used bunker bombs that penetrate several meters into the ground. This has been responded to by Hamas by digging even deeper tunnels and expanding its network. There are fundamentally two types of tunnels: there are the defensive ones, which are to hide their infrastructure, and then there are the offensive tunnels, which have been used mainly to pass under the defensive fence that separated the Gaza Strip from Israel. And those offensive tunnels were used to appear behind Israeli military bases, capture soldiers and take them back. What happens is that, in this technological race, the means put in place by Israel to prevent the construction of these tunnels advanced so much that they discarded that method and we have reached October 7 with a frontal attack against the border. But in any case there is a huge infrastructure throughout the Strip, because it not only serves to hide forces for the command centers, for the warehouses, to hide the shuttles, but it is also part of what would be Hamas’ defensive device to move their combatants within urban areas.
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RFI: This is not a new phenomenon. To what extent does Israel know about the existence of these tunnels? And to what extent is this Hamas strategy dangerous for Israel as it advances in this offensive?
Jesús M. Pérez Triana: The confirmation that there were tunnels is prior. In 2014, the Israeli defense forces entered the Gaza Strip, reached the outskirts of Gaza City and there they showed in images or videos that, by lifting the carpet of a mosque, there was an access, a sewer with a staircase that leads inside that network of tunnels in which Hamas fighters move from one side to the other. And well, historically there have also been other previous cases. For example, the Viet Cong guerrillas in Vietnam used tunnels. The thing is, what we see in the Gaza Strip is that there has been an effort to build a huge network of hundreds of kilometers. Furthermore, these tunnels are not handmade. There is industrial machinery there and they are sufficiently piped to provide safety to the people who move. And this is going to be a fundamental part of the strategy, because what we see is that Israel is in control: it is going to have its attack helicopters, it is going to have its drones, it is going to have its combat planes flying over the Strip, so the The only alternative that Hamas has to move fighters freely within Gaza City, in the presumed urban battle that is coming, is to have these tunnels. Apart from the fact that seeing Israel’s ability to blow up warehouses and ammunition depots, which we have seen, for example, in the case of Hezbollah in Syria, the only way they can survive Israeli attacks is to dig their Store as deep as possible.
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What way does Israel know? Well, in 2021, Israel assured that for the first time they had used artificial intelligence systems to deduce the layout of these tunnels. The truth is that while the offensive tunnels that approach the fence are detected with seismic systems, it is very difficult to predict their layout for the defensive tunnels that are in the heart of the city. So, possibly there must be, so to speak, moles or infiltrators, that is, Palestinian fighters or residents of the Gaza Strip who are at the service of Israel for multiple reasons and who then provide information. There has to be, I imagine, the collation of a lot of information and that’s where the artificial intelligence systems come in, seeing where they move, where they enter, where they leave, where some people’s mobile phone signal turns off, but that It is a fairly complex task and the truth is that much of what we know about the tunnels comes from what the Israelis say they have discovered. But they don’t tell everything they know. But we don’t have sources either. I mean, there’s no way to know. Of course, several times Palestinian organizations have shown their tunnels to journalists from their own propaganda organs and also to journalists from media outlets that they consider related. So we know about the existence of those tunnels, they have shown them in their propaganda videos. We have even seen that, for example, there are tunnels in which a Hamas fighter moves with a motorcycle because it is a long distance and the tunnel is wide enough to be able to move, we assume, fighters and couriers who use a motor vehicle. So most of the things we know about that network of tunnels are either assumptions, or are simply the little information that the Palestinians themselves have shown. And then the Israeli sources who tell us, for example, about the concept of the “Gaza Metro”, which is an ironic term to refer to the extensive network of tunnels. That term was coined by the Israelis and they are the ones who claim that there is a network of hundreds of kilometers of tunnels. But we don’t know. We cannot verify it.
RFI: In the face of Israel’s offensive, can Hamas respond in a surprising way? Can we still be surprised thanks to these tunnels or thanks to other techniques?
Jesús M. Pérez Triana: One thing is clear and that is that those who devised, organized and launched the terrorist attacks of October 7 knew that there was going to be a forceful response from Israel. That is to say, in the planning of the attacks in October there also had to be a part of defense preparations. Until now we had seen several military operations in the past, for example, the one in 2014, which was the first in which we saw the existence of these defensive tunnels because the press office of the defense forces showed it. So the question is, what surprises have each other prepared? In 2021, Israel had announced the use of artificial intelligence, for example. What new things? Well the truth is that we don’t know. On the first day, for example, Hamas showed kamikaze drones (an Iranian design that copies a Polish design captured by the Russians in the Ukraine war), he showed a letter. They also showed the drones that are used for professional audio and video recording with an anti-tank projectile. Then they showed that they have made a technological leap in drone capacity. Possibly not everything passes through the Gaza Strip, that is, the assets that Hamas has are, for example, opening a second front with Palestinian fighters on the northern border. But all the advanced missiles and all the anti-tank projectiles received by Hamas, which was an asset provided to them by Iran, seem to be countered. This is a real technological race. The thing is that we really don’t know what surprises each other has in store. In 2014, for example, Israel tested remotely piloted armored vehicles in the Gaza Strip for the first time. That is, they took authentic armored vehicles that they had already used in the war, such as the M113 armored vehicle, which was the vehicle they used to transport troops in the invasion of Lebanon in 82, and they tested it by driving at a distance. This allowed, for example, in areas where there was very intense shooting, to evacuate wounded soldiers or bring ammunition, water and food to soldiers who were on the front line in an area with the presence of snipers. So it seems that in each conflict each side shows itself part of its cards. But I think that fundamentally we still have to see what other surprises, because the situation is that there is overwhelming firepower on the Israeli side in terms of aviation, artillery. They have been preparing for this type of war for a long time. They have a special unit for tunnel warfare, they have developed robots to explore the tunnels. So I believe that each side has some surprises, but they have not yet shown all the cards.
RFI: All eyes are on Gaza, but what is happening in the West Bank?
Jesús M. Pérez Triana: Paradoxically, all the attention of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the last 18 months has been focused on the West Bank. That is to say, we are here because Hamas was losing its leading role in the conflict and they need to present themselves to Palestinian society as the authentic Palestinian vanguard. Now we are talking about Gaza because the action of October 7 had a double mission: one was to regain Hamas’ prominence and distract attention from the West Bank. And the other was because this action on October 7 served Iran to open a gap between Israel and the Arab countries that were getting closer. We all understand that there is a conflict over the territory and in the case of Gaza it is not such: in 2005 Israel withdrew, there has been no Israeli occupation since 2005. What there is is that in 2007 Hamas took control, converted that in a dictatorship and is an organization that does not recognize Israel’s right to exist. So the focus is on the West Bank, where a new generation of fighting groups has emerged. They are the Jenin Brigades, The Lion’s Den… In other words, there is a whole new generation of young Palestinians who do not consider the existing leadership of the Palestinian Authority, which controls the territories there, to be legitimate. And then we have this new generation that is challenging a situation. Israel has been expanding precisely because it has had room to do so, because it has felt validated by the United States. So, in a territory that he conquered militarily in the year 67, he has been establishing new settlements, new localities and introducing population. It is something that should not be done until there is a permanent peace agreement in which the borders are established. And that is the point of friction and the point of conflict. Furthermore, what the current Government has done is not only encourage and look the other way, when this new population that is settling there collides with the local Palestinian population, but on top of that it has protected it, it has increased the security of that population so that he feels he has more room to attack the Palestinian population. And that is another of the factors that led us to October 7. The military intelligence resources, all the interest of the current Government was in the expansion of these settlements and left the southern border absolutely unprotected. So this has been, from an ethical, moral or legal point of view, but also from a purely strategic point of view, an Israeli mistake to focus attention resources on a territory in which the population should not be expanding until that there is no definitive peace agreement.
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