https://www.jns.org/idf-still-hasnt-internalized-the-tunnel-threat-experts-say/
Tunnels have proven to be a critical threat to the Jewish state. While the Israel Defense Forces certainly hasn’t ignored them, it has been slow to grasp their strategic significance.
Some argue that it still hasn’t.
“I still don’t see the necessary change in the IDF’s worldview that would allow us to better deal with this phenomenon of underground warfare,” Yehuda Kfir, a civil engineer and researcher of subterranean warfare, told JNS.
Professor Joel Roskin, a geomorphologist at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, has reached the same conclusion.
Perhaps the best supporting example is that when the IDF built its defensive “smart wall” (completed in 2021) between Israel and the Gaza Strip, it continued to let Hamas build all the underground infrastructure it pleased as long as it stayed on its side of the fence.
The resulting underground city in Gaza, from which Hamas could command and control its forces, send them out to attack and recall them to shelter in place, has served to prolong the war and prevent Israel from saving the remaining hostages.
It allowed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar to elude Israeli forces for more than a year. Sinwar himself (along with 1,026 others) was released from Israeli prison in 2011 in exchange for IDF soldier Gilad Shalit—who had been kidnapped by terrorists who emerged from a tunnel.
