- Israel has drawn up plans to flood Gaza's tunnels with seawater
- The tunnels would be flooded within weeks, forcing Hamas out
- But US officials have privately expressed concerns about the plans
Israel has built a system of large pumps that it could use to flood the complex network of tunnels under Hamas's Gaza Strip with seawater.
The IDF completed construction of several large seawater pumps in mid-November, about a mile north of the Al-Shati refugee camp. The Wall Street Journal reports this.
The pumps, of which at least five have been built, can each pump thousands of cubic meters of water from the Mediterranean into the tunnels per hour, flooding them within weeks.
U.S. officials said Israel first informed them of the plans in early November, though they did not know when or even if the Israeli government would implement the plans.
One source told the newspaper that the plan would take place over several weeks, meaning Hamas would have enough time to get all the hostages out of the tunnels.
The IDF completed construction of several large seawater pumps in mid-November, about a mile north of the Al-Shati refugee camp.
U.S. officials said in early November that Israel was the first to know about the plans, although they did not know when or even if the Israeli government would implement the plans.
It is currently unclear what environmental impact this measure will have, given how little the world knows about the tunnels under Gaza
But sources told the newspaper they had reservations about the plan.
“We are not sure how successful the pumping will be as no one knows the details of the tunnels and the ground around them,” said an anonymous official.
“It's impossible to know if that will be effective because we don't know how the seawater will drain into tunnels where no one has ever been.”
It is currently unclear what environmental impact this measure will have, given how little the world knows about the tunnels under Gaza.
Jon Alterman, senior vice president of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said: “It is difficult to say what seawater pumping will do to existing water and sewer infrastructure.
'It is difficult to say what it will do to groundwater reserves. And it is difficult to predict the impact on the stability of nearby buildings.'
The IDF has consistently called on Gaza residents to flee the enclave in its efforts to eradicate the area's Hamas rulers.
The Israeli army is currently pushing deeper into the south of the Gaza Strip
The war has displaced more than three-quarters of Gaza's 2.3 million residents, leaving almost no safe places to go
In 2015, Egypt tried a similar method, flooding tunnels near the Rafah border crossing with saltwater in an attempt to deter smugglers from crossing the border.
But local officials said this damaged the area's water supply and threatened to destroy farmland and spread disease.
The flooding reached streets and houses within 100 meters of the border fence, and huge puddles and mud puddles were very common sights.
“One cubic meter of seawater pollutes 40 cubic meters of underground water,” Tamer al-Sleibi, director of the water department of the Palestinian Environmental Quality Authority in Gaza, told Reuters at the time.
He said the Egyptian plan weakened the foundations of houses already on shaky ground due to the tunnel construction, and made land unsuitable for agriculture in areas near the border.
It also posed a health risk because the water stagnated, allowing mosquitoes and other disease carriers to breed.