The Hamas Handbook of Underground Fight describes in painstaking element navigate the darkness, transfer stealthily below Gaza, and hearth automated weapons in confined areas for max lethality.
Battlefield commanders have been even instructed to measure to the second how lengthy it took their fighters to maneuver between totally different factors underground.
The 2019 guide, which was seized by Israeli forces and reviewed by The New York Occasions, was a part of a years-long effort by Hamas, nicely earlier than its October 7 assault and the present conflict with Israel, to construct an underground navy operation that might face up to sustained assaults and delaying Israeli floor forces in the dead of night tunnels.
Only a yr earlier than attacking Israel, Yahya Sinwar, the chief of Hamas within the Gaza Strip, authorized spending $225,000 to put in blast doorways to guard the militia’s community of tunnels from airstrikes and floor assaults.
The approval doc mentioned Hamas brigade commanders inspected the tunnels below Gaza and recognized vital areas underground and on the floor that wanted strengthening.
The tapes, together with interviews with specialists and Israeli commanders, assist clarify why, almost a yr after the conflict started, Israel is struggling to realize its purpose of defeating Hamas.
Israeli officers have spent years trying to find and dismantling tunnels that Hamas might use to infiltrate Israel and perform an assault. However assessing the underground community in Gaza is just not a precedence, a senior Israeli official mentioned, as a result of an invasion and full-scale conflict there appears unlikely.
All alongside, because the authorities now notice, Hamas has been making ready for simply such a confrontation.
If not for the tunnels, specialists say, Hamas would have little probability towards Israel’s vastly superior navy.
The Underground Fight Information incorporates directions on masks tunnel entrances, find them with compasses or GPS, enter rapidly, and navigate effectively.
“Whereas transferring in the dead of night within the tunnel, the fighter wants night time imaginative and prescient goggles outfitted with infrared rays,” the doc, written in Arabic, mentioned. Weapons have to be automated and fired from the shoulder. “Such a taking pictures is efficient as a result of the tunnel is slender, so the pictures goal the killing zones within the higher a part of the human physique.” Israeli officers knew earlier than the conflict that Hamas had an in depth community of tunnels, however there’s turned out to be more complex and extensive than they imagined.
At first of the conflict, they estimated that it stretched about 250 miles. Now they assume it is as much as twice as lengthy.
And so they maintain discovering new tunnels. Simply final week, Israeli commandos rescued an Arab Bedouin, a citizen of Israel, who was discovered alone in an underground labyrinth. The federal government mentioned on Sunday that six hostages had been discovered useless in one other tunnel.
Mr. Sinwar, Israel’s most beneficial goal, is suspected of working the conflict and evading seize from a tunnel.
The data present how each side needed to adapt their techniques within the conflict. Simply as Israel underestimated the tunnels, Hamas ready for underground battles that didn’t materialize. Israel was reluctant, particularly early within the conflict, to ship troops underground the place they might face fight. Hamas has above all ambushed troopers close to the tunnel entrances whereas avoiding direct collisions.
That led Hamas to make use of the tunnels to hold out floor assaults, cover from Israeli forces and detonate explosives utilizing distant triggers and hidden cameras, in response to Israeli navy officers and a evaluate of pictures and movies from the battlefield.
These maneuvers slowed Israel’s assault, however its military nonetheless decimated Hamas ranks, drove them from their strongholds, and compelled them to desert large swaths of the tunnel community they’d invested a lot in constructing.
Members of the Israeli navy found the tunnel warfare doc within the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza Metropolis in November, officers mentioned. A letter from Mr. Sinwar to a navy commander was found that very same month south of the town. The paperwork have been supplied to The Occasions by the Israeli navy.
A navy spokesman mentioned “the truth that Hamas is hiding in tunnels and directing a lot of the combating from there’s prolonging the conflict.” A senior Hamas official declined to touch upon the tunnel technique.
The markings on the paperwork are in keeping with different Hamas materials that has been printed or reviewed by The Occasions. And Israeli troopers have described particulars, reminiscent of camouflaged tunnel entrances and just lately put in blast doorways, which can be in keeping with Hamas paperwork. The paperwork additionally describe the usage of fuel detectors and night time imaginative and prescient goggles, tools that Israeli forces have present in tunnels.
“Hamas’ combating technique is predicated on underground techniques,” mentioned Tamir Heyman, a former head of Israeli navy intelligence. “That is one of many major causes they have been ready to withstand the IDF to date.”
For the reason that starting of the conflict, a lot has been revealed concerning the underground community referred to as the “Gaza Metro”. Hamas makes use of some rudimentary tunnels merely to stage assaults. The battle guide describes how males ought to maneuver by means of these slender passages within the darkness: with one hand on the wall and the opposite on the fighter in entrance.
Different tunnels are superior command and management facilities or arteries connecting underground weapons factories to storage amenities – concealing all the navy infrastructure of Hamas. In some instances, Hamas makes use of photo voltaic panels put in on the roofs of personal houses to offer energy underground.
Some tunnels additionally function communication hubs. Final winter, Israeli forces found a Nokia telecommunications system below the headquarters of the UN company for Palestine refugees.
Such Nokia methods present voice and information companies, in response to the guide obtained by The Occasions, and will operate as a switchboard for an underground communications community. However the options require extra {hardware}, and it is unclear what capabilities Hamas had.
Hamas is thought to carry Israeli hostages underground, so every tunnel have to be explored and cleared, Israeli officers say.
Destroying a tunnel part can take dozens of troopers about 10 hours, in response to a senior Israeli officer who’s an professional in tunnel warfare. Final yr, the Israeli military found a tunnel 250 toes deep – concerning the peak of a 25-story constructing. The military mentioned it took months to destroy.
“I can not overstate this in any approach. Tunnels have an effect on the tempo of operations,” mentioned Daphne Richmond-Barak, an professional on tunnel warfare at Reichmann College in Israel. “You can not advance. You’ll be able to’t safe the sector.”
“You are coping with two wars,” she added. “One on the floor and one beneath the floor.”
One Israeli particular operations officer, who, like others, spoke on situation of anonymity as a result of they weren’t licensed to publicly talk about navy actions, mentioned that as troopers approached the tunnels, Hamas generally blew up the ceilings, inflicting dents that may block a highway.
An Israeli navy official mentioned it might take years to destroy all the community of tunnels.
Israel’s navy management has made the tunnels its major goal. However the marketing campaign has come at a excessive value to Palestinian civilians. Most of the tunnels wind below densely populated areas. Israel has launched movies of the navy destroying tunnels with greater than 16 tons of explosives per kilometer.
The Israeli navy estimates that it value Hamas about $300,000 to construct a roughly half-mile lengthy tunnel. Ms Richemond-Barak mentioned the letter from Mr Sinwar highlighted the price and class behind the trouble.
The letter was written to Mohammed Deif, the group’s navy commander who’s believed to have been the architect of the October 7 assault. It’s not clear when Hamas accomplished its inspection of the tunnel fortifications or whether or not it was carried out in reference to planning the assault. Mr. Sinwar wrote that “the brigades will obtain the cash in response to the diploma of significance and necessity.”
The letter could point out the place the group expects the heaviest combating. Mr. Sinwar licensed essentially the most cash for doorways in Northern Gaza and Khan Younis. Certainly, a number of the heaviest combating of the conflict happened in these areas.
“The Hamas tunnel system was a basic, if not existential, factor of their preliminary battle plan,” mentioned Ralph F. Goff, a former senior CIA official who served within the Center East.
It’s not clear when Hamas started utilizing the doorways, however Ms Richmond-Barack mentioned the group’s heavy reliance on them was new. She didn’t know that Hamas had used them through the 2014 conflict with Israel.
Blast doorways seal off the tunnel segments from one another and from the skin, defending towards bombing and breaching. Additionally they stop the navy from utilizing drones to examine and map tunnels.
The Israeli navy has repeatedly come throughout blast doorways whereas clearing tunnels. Regardless of the techniques outlined within the anti-tunnel guide, as soon as these doorways are breached, Israeli officers say, troopers hardly ever discover Hamas fighters behind them. They fled, reflecting an attack-and-retreat technique that had change into commonplace.
Eric Schmidt contributed reporting from Washington.
