| Israeli here, and this is not going to be a very subjective opinion, but rather a simple observations after being through a few wars with thousands of rockets shot each. In the 2nd Lebanon war(2006), Hezbollah shot ~120 rockets/day at north Israel and Haifa, and the destruction was both visible and painful. 44 civilians dead. Multiple buildings in Haifa destroyed. I remember the pictures, so many of them. We had the alarms, we had the bomb shelters then, but still, the rockets destroyed and killed. In the current conflict, almost zero dead, almost zero buildings destroyed, and this is while Hamas is shooting roughly the same number of rockets(~120/day), bigger rockets and to a far more densely populated areas than ever targeted by either Hamas OR Hezbollah(Tel Aviv, Rishon Leziyon where most of Israeli population and commerce is). There is a reason why Hezbollah and Hamas equipped themselves with tens of thousands of rockets, because it used to work, but not anymore. I've even had a discussion previously today with my dad that if accuracy of Iron Dome would increase to 99%, we could actually turn off the siren system and maybe just ignore Hamas rockets, keep living normally, thus preventing the need to use offensive military force and prevent casualties on both sides. Unfortunately we've recently learned that Hamas has already developed a new tactic, building tunnels under the border into Israeli towns and have 10-20 Hamas soldiers come with handcuffs and syringes with anastasia to kidnap Israeli civilians. We've already discovered ~15 such tunnels, and there is much talk that we need an "Iron Dome" for discovering tunnels in the very special geological structure of the sand around Gaza. I personally need an Iron Dome for my soul, after seeing so many pictures of Israelis and Gazans dead, having difficult conversations with my kids and having a difficult time building my startup when all I can think of is this war. Fucking war. (While writing this I was interrupted due to 3 rockets shot at Tel Aviv, 2 intercepted, 1 hit a house, the first time for central Israel in this war.. the irony). |
I tried to dig up a source for this, and while I did find an article published just today [1], it says the tunnels have been used to (try to) kidnap Israeli soldiers, and on a rather smaller scale (a few intruders, not 10-20). Has there been any incident (successful or interrupted) of civilians kidnapped via these tunnels? It surely is a terrifying prospect, but how practical is it?
[1] http://www.smh.com.au/world/how-hamas-uses-its-tunnels-to-ki...