As the ceasefire in Gaza approaches its second month, Israel and Hamas, as well as the mediators, have still been unable to resolve issues regarding the grid of Gaza tunnels, dubbed by the Israelis the “Gaza Metro.”
During the past few days in particular, the debate has focused on a group of Hamas operatives, of an unspecified number between 100 and 200, who have been held captive in the tunnels.
In control of the eastern side of Gaza, Israel has been denying an exit for the operatives. Meanwhile, five groups of Palestinian collaborators working with the Israeli occupation in the western side of Gaza have been watching possible exits from the Gaza tunnels to prohibit the escape of the Hamas operatives.
Over the past two weeks, Israel has announced that it has killed several leading Hamas operatives who were trying to escape from the tunnels. It has declined all proposals put forward by the mediators to resolve the problem by securing a safe exit for the operatives, who would have put down their arms prior to emerging from the tunnels.
“Israel is not looking for an end to the problem. It wants to eliminate the operatives because they are among the top Hamas militants and have very advanced training,” said Wael Rabie, a former high-ranking Egyptian military officer.
For Israel, these operatives are not just top-ranking militants, he said. They are also an important asset as their presence could help Israel to better trace the tunnel network in Gaza that has always been “a very tough challenge for the Israeli army,” Rabie said.
“After two years of a very harsh Israeli war on Gaza, Israel has failed to retrieve the captives that Hamas held for two years in the tunnels without coming to an agreement to end the war,” he added.
He argued that if Israel had found a way to get the hostages out of the Gaza tunnels without a deal, it would not have agreed to stop the war. “The reality is that despite all its advanced technology, military strength, and the support Israel receives from the US, it has been unable to crack the tunnel network in Gaza,” Rabie said.
He added that this has been the case despite the fact that about 20 years ago the Israeli army established a special unit to try to map the Gaza grid and have the tunnels destroyed or blocked.
“They tried several techniques to trace the tunnels, but the success was very limited. They tried to destroy the tunnels they had traced, but again they failed, even when they tried to inundate the tunnels with water from the Mediterranean or to use cellular lightweight concrete,” Rabie said.
He said that this was largely due to the construction techniques that Hamas had used, especially since the winter of 2011 when former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar took over the military command in Gaza following his release from Israeli jail in October 2011 as part of the prisoner-swap deal that allowed for the release of over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in return for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
Shalit was held captive by Hamas in one of the Gaza tunnels for over five years after June 2006. The attacks on Israel conducted by Hamas on 7 October 2023 were executed through a double-track operation through the tunnels and on the ground.
“Israel’s worst nightmare about the tunnels came true when the Israelis that were taken hostage on 7 October ended in the tunnels,” Rabie said.
He added that for some years before that Israel was trying to block or destroy the tunnels that Hamas was using to secure the entry and the manufacturing of arms, as well as to launch rocket attacks against Israeli targets in the north of Gaza on the border with Israel.
ORIGINS: It was in the early 1990s that Hamas, only founded in 1987, started to build the tunnels.
Originally, Rabie said, the idea was to use them to secure the entry of commodities, including food items and even livestock into Gaza, away from the restrictions that Israel has often imposed on it.
“At the time, it was the way that Hamas tried to evade Israeli scrutiny,” he explained.
Eventually, Rabie added, as Israel advanced its aerial and satellite scanning technology and became able to spot and destroy workshops involved in the manufacture of arms, Hamas decided to go underground.
“This gave Hamas an edge because Israel found it more difficult to reach the tunnels,” he added.
Rabie said that the tunnels then evolved into a multi-purpose complex, with some used for offensive operations and to launch missiles, some used for trapping Israeli troops that had advanced into Gaza, and some used to store arms and for training.
“These are tunnels that are built on three floors at a considerable depth and with multiple entry, exit, and ventilation points,” he said.
“This was the plan that Sinwar worked on for years after he was released,” Rabie stated. On 16 October 2024, Israel managed to eliminate Sinwar when he stepped out of the tunnels from which he was leading operations in Gaza.
Israel “claims to have a full and detailed map of the Gaza tunnels, but this is clearly not the case,” Rabie said, adding that Israel does not even have an accurate figure of their number.
The Israeli account is that there are around 1,800 tunnels in Gaza. Palestinian sources say that the true number is significantly less.
For decades, Israeli officials have complained to their Egyptian counterparts about the tunnels that stretch from Gaza into Egyptian territory. Egyptian officials have always blamed the issue on the Israeli siege imposed on Gaza, especially after the Hamas electoral victory in 2006 and the subsequent exit of the Palestinian Authority (PA) following disagreements between the PA and Hamas.
“When President [Abdel-Fattah] Al-Sisi took over, he faced the problem by telling the Israelis that they have to allow commodities into Gaza through the legal channels, and he acted promptly to close all the extensions of the Gaza tunnels that were leading to Egyptian territory,” Rabie said.
Hamas had managed to use its land-sea tunnels that connect Gaza to the Mediterranean to keep business going almost as usual. Rabie said that Israel has been unable to block all these tunnels, whether those leading to the Mediterranean or those leading to the south of Israel.
“Now Israel is looking for every possible entry or exit point to any tunnel in the part of Gaza that it has controlled since the ceasefire went into effect on 10 October,” Rabie said. He added that through the subsequent violations of the ceasefire, “which did not stop for a single day since the ceasefire went into effect,” Israel is trying to trace and destroy all the tunnels in the western part of Gaza that it does not control.
He added that Israel is lobbying to put the International Stabilisation Force (ISF) that was agreed to in UN Security Council Resolution 2803 last month in charge of tracing and destroying the Gaza tunnels as part of a wider scheme to get it to disarm Hamas.
This, Rabie insisted, is not something that any of the Arab and Muslim countries that join the ISF could sign up to. He argued that as far as the Arab and Muslim countries are concerned, the ISF mission does not involve combat operations but is designed to secure the sustainability of the ceasefire in the hope that the two sides will move to the second phase.
“Since it established a special unit to eliminate the tunnels back in 2013, Israel has failed to achieve its objectives on this front. Today, it cannot expect the ISF to take over the job,” Rabie said.
What Israel will do to meet the challenge of the tunnels remains to be seen. “In any case, it will not be easy, and it will not be done in a short period of time,” Rabie concluded.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 4 December, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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