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A massive tunnel system running from Gaza to the Egyptian border has long served Palestinians as a supply line for everything from livestock and construction materials to stocks of medicine and smuggled electronics equipment. But now, as war rages in the area, the tunnels have become the main route for providing the Hamas terror group with the weapons it needs to fight against Israel.Dismantling the tunnels in Gaza is a key to winning the war for Israel, which has sworn to eradicate them. But military experts and historians say destroying them will be virtually impossible.The tunnel system is strikingly similar to the Viet Cong's infamous Cu Chi tunnels during the Vietnam War. The Viet Cong moved weapons and supplies through their tunnels, and, like Hamas, they hid their top leaders in them as well.The Viet Cong — a technological underdog to the United States — was able to bridge the firepower gap against a world superpower through sheer cunning and ingenuity. The Cu Chi tunnels were a vast network of underground sleeping quarters, weapon storage facilities, war rooms and fighting positions. Guerrillas dug out makeshift medical facilities beneath the earth, and doctors tended to wounded soldiers in them, often using electricity generated by a bicycle.The Viet Cong planned and executed attacks from beneath the surface, and the U.S. military launched two tunnel-specific offensives to eradicate them. But both Operation Crimp and Operation Cedar Falls met with mixed results, and the goal of sealing off the tunnels proved elusive at best.Australians and Americans used gas, water and explosives to exterminate the threat from below, but even aerial carpet-bombing proved ineffective for underground paths that ran as deep as 60 feet. Like the boots on the ground necessary to physically root out an opposing force, the tunnels required painstaking personal attention.The Australians used infantrymen they named "tunnel rats" to descend into the mazes and engage the enemy. They performed admirably, despite exploding booby-trapped hatches and steep drops where soiled and sharpened bamboo sticks could skewer a soldier. But the clandestine subterranean insurgency persisted.Now, nearly 40 years later, Israeli forces face a similar threat, with obstacles that have not changed."Hamas' tunnels systems as a tactic within the urban guerrilla-style warfare, were known to the [Israeli forces] for more than two years in which the appropriate operational tactics were developed and adopted," said retired Col. Yoni Fighel, a senior researcher at the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism, at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel....By Matt Sanchez
As in the days of Noah...
