A general view shows the interiors of what the Israeli military say is a cross-border attack tunnel dug from Gaza to Israel, on the Israeli side of the Gaza Strip border near Kissufim January 18, 2018.
After the last round of hostilities in 2021, Hamas's leader in Gaza, Yehya Al-Sinwar, said: "They started saying they destroyed 100kms of Hamas tunnels.
Tunneling became easier in 2005 when Israel pulled its soldiers and settlers out of Gaza, and when Hamas won power in a 2006 election.
Although the military tunnels remained off-limits to outside eyes, during that era Gaza smugglers would show off their scarcely concealed commercial tunnels under the Rafah border.
Israeli sources said what awaits them is formidable and they faced an enemy that has regrouped and learned from previous Israeli operations in 2014 and 2021.
Persons:
Jack Guez, Lloyd Austin, Yehya Al, Sinwar, Lifshitz, Mahmoud Abbas, Amir Avivi, Abdel Fattah al, Sisi, Israel, Yasser Arafat's, Deen al, Gilad Shalit, Abu Qusay, Mohammed Deif, Deif, Joel Roskin, Ilan University, Benjamin Netanyahu, Amnon Sofrin, Daphne Richemond, Barak, Jonathan Saul, Stephen Farrell, Phil Stewart, Nafisa Eltahir, Ahmed Mohamed Hassan, Janet Lawrence
Organizations:
REUTERS, U.S, U.S . Defense, Israel, United Nations Security Council, LONG, Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, West Bank, Hamas, Brigades, Arafat's, Israel's, Ilan, Israel's Combat Engineering, Combat Intelligence Corps, Israel's Reichman University, IDF, ISIS, Thomson
Locations:
Gaza, Israel, Kissufim, JERUSALEM, LONDON, Hamas, Palestinian, States, Mosul, Islamic, Egypt, Israeli, Viet, Israel's, Egyptian, El Arish, Suez, Yasser Arafat's Palestine, Jordan, Rafah, Syria, Iraq, State, Jerusalem, London, Washington, Cairo