At first glance, the scene has an almost rudimentary, amateurish feel. The rock is hard and jagged. Marks and scratches from heavy duty digging equipment mottle the walls.
They look almost like caves – but these are Hezbollah’s ‘terror tunnels’ and, like the group itself, they are sophisticated, potent and deadly. One year on from the atrocities of October 7, it’s clear that murder comes to Israel not just from the air but from what lies beneath.
Last week, the IDF revealed that even before troops crossed the border into Lebanon on October 1, Israeli special forces had conducted dozens of operations in the country’s south to destroy Hezbollah’s tunnels. The threat from Hamas’s tunnels is better known and much of the work in Gaza in recent months has involved trying to take these out. Now Israel is attempting to tackle an even greater threat to its north.
At a Press conference on Tuesday, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari reported that after raiding a Hezbollah compound, Israeli troops had discovered a map that was to be used by terrorists during an invasion of Israel’s north called Operation Conquer The Galilee.
‘As you can see, it has a legend marking Israeli settlements,’ Hagari said, holding the map to the camera. ‘IDF posts, access roads and attack targets that Hezbollah planned to conquer.
One year on from the atrocities of October 7, it’s clear that murder comes to Israel not just from the air but from what lies beneath. (Israeli forces are pictured inside Hezbollah tunnels)
An Israeli army serviceman holds the door to the entrance of a tunnel dug by the Lebanese Hezbollah Islamist political party and militant group
‘This map was supposed to be used by thousands of Hezbollah terrorists on the day of the order to raid the territory of the State of Israel, as Hamas did on October 7.’
Israelis are not willing to risk a second such catastrophe at the hands of Hezbollah. Yesterday, the Supreme Leader of Iran, which funds Hezbollah, described the atrocities of October 7 as a ‘justified act’.
One IDF raid was on the southern Lebanese village Ayta ash Shab. Here, it found dozens of underground shafts and tunnels, some 80ft deep, with rocket launchers and ten ammunition stores. It was clear proof of what Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had told the UN at the end of September: that Hezbollah ‘secretly dug terror tunnels to infiltrate our communities and indiscriminately fired thousands of rockets into our towns and villages’. An enormous amount of time, cash and sweat has gone into constructing this terrifying grid on Israel’s northern border.
In 2021, the Alma Research And Education Centre estimated that Hezbollah’s tunnels run for ‘hundreds of kilometres’ and, like those of Hamas, ‘contain underground command and control rooms, weapons and supply depots, field clinics and specified designated shafts used to fire missiles of all types’.
Alma assessed their extent as ‘significantly larger’ even than the network that criss-crosses Gaza – the so-called ‘Hamas metro’, itself estimated to be longer than London’s Tube.
The IDF estimates that, pre-war, the Hamas network spanned at least 186 miles with a depth of between 50 to 200ft, with the average tunnel being over 6ft high and 3ft wide. In 2020 the IDF found a tunnel 230ft deep.
Its cost was also huge. In August 2014, the Israeli military destroyed 32 Hamas tunnels that it estimated had cost $90million (£69million) to build.
The average tunnel required 350 truckloads of construction supplies – enough to build 86 homes.
Israeli special forces hads conducted dozens of operations in the country’s south to destroy Hezbollah’s tunnels. (An Israeli soldier at a tunnel dug by the Lebanese militant group of Hezbollah)
Israeli special forces have carried out more than 70 operations in southern Lebanon, spending hundreds of days and more than 200 nights in Lebanon over the last year
Hamas began experimenting with tunnels into Egypt in the late 90s, while Hezbollah only adopted the tactic following its 2006 war with Israel. The two groups have spent years exchanging information and sharing techniques around tunnel warfare.
According to Dr Daphne Richemond-Barak, professor at Israel’s Reichman University, and author of Underground Warfare: ‘There is electricity and ventilation. Some contain sleeping quarters, with mattresses and fridges and kitchen. There are also military bases with all the requisite equipment. It’s all geared toward being able to stay underground for prolonged periods.
‘I have no doubt that the ground invasion into Lebanon right now is linked to the tunnels.’
The tunnels even link major cities. It may be beyond the IDF to take out the entire network, but the tunnels in the country’s south, at least, must be taken care of.
It will be a long process. In Gaza, the IDF tunnel-clearers faced an array of obstacles, not least Hamas booby-traps. It’s dangerous work, but Israel needs to understand how its enemy is making use of this increasingly strategic form of warfare.
Israel has tried to tackle Hezbollah’s tunnel network before. In December 2018, the IDF launched Operation Northern Shield to destroy the tunnels used in cross-border strikes into Israel.
By the end of January 2019, after finding six tunnels, IDF spokesman Jonathan Conricus said, ‘according to our intelligence and our assessment of the situation, there are no longer any cross-border attack tunnels from Lebanon into Israel’.
If Conricus’s words smacked of hubris, the scope and sophistication of the tunnel network destroyed back then was inescapably clear. The IDF discovered a tunnel 260ft deep (equivalent to a 22-storey building) near the northern Israeli town of Zarit.
Documentation of a Hezbollah underground tunnel as IDF troops entered in Ayta Ash Shab, southern Lebanon
The tunnels even link major cities. It may be beyond the IDF to take out the entire network, but the tunnels in the country’s south, at least, must be taken care of. (The inside of a Hezbollah tunnel)
Another, which started in the village of Ramyeh, was 180ft deep and ran 2,600ft through Lebanese territory until it reached ‘dozens’ of yards into Israel. The tunnel had ‘a rail system and a passageway that allowed for the movement of military equipment’.
What makes all this more chilling is that Hezbollah’s tunnel network was built with help from North Korea. According to Richemond-Barak: ‘Hezbollah’s tunnels are built to be massive invasion tunnels and are reminiscent of what North Korea planned to do to South Korea. We have evidence that the North Koreans met with Hezbollah – and the results are clear here.’ Alma says the tunnels were also constructed with the help of Iranian companies – including those with links to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
In a video Hezbollah released in August, the tunnel walls are dotted with posters of Iran’s former Quds Force commander, Qasem Soleimani (killed by the Americans in a drone strike in January 2020) as well as Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah (assassinated last month in Beirut by Israeli jets).
The Iranian regime itself is the master of the subterranean world. It has long experience of building deep underground: notably to hide its nuclear facilities. Hezbollah has learned from Tehran. It is building larger and deeper tunnels and hiding its most strategic assets inside them – just as the Iranians do.
There’s something about the subterranean world, terrorists and rogue states.
ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was cornered and killed in a tunnel; Saddam Hussein was found hiding in one; and Osama bin Laden evaded US capture many times using tunnels.
And of course, the Israelis killed Nasrallah when he was deep underground in his bunker (it’s likely that the last thing he saw before he died was Benjamin Netanyahu’s UN speech).
Nasrallah was 65ft under Beirut and it didn’t save him. F-15s used 2,000lb Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs) that penetrate deep into their targets before exploding. Israeli military sources tell me that the air force used several of these bunker-busting bombs one after the other to blast their way so far down into the earth.
Nasrallah’s killing was not just a tactical master-stroke, it was a message to Iran: no matter how deep you or your allies burrow, we will get you.
After Nasrallah’s death, the Iranians knew they had to respond. They decided to launch around 180 ballistic missiles at Tel Aviv and central Israel. Thankfully, the attack largely failed. The only death was of a Palestinian man in the West Bank, which is unequivocally tragic, but a far cry from the mass casualties Iran wanted.
When Iran launched these strikes, it made its move on the geopolitical chessboard.
Now it’s Israel’s turn.
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