The IDF has seized control of a secret underground web of tunnels which both served as a bunker for the top Hamas leadership and as a transportation route to above-ground sites in and around Palestine Square and in Gaza City.
“This is a city that exists on two levels, one above ground and one underneath,” Commander of the 401st Brigade, Colonel Beni Aharon told reporters, and the battle for it also takes place in both arenas.
Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh, Yahya Sinwar, Muhammad Deif used this network to manage the organization’s operation and movement through the heart of Gaza City, said the army, which has nicknamed the area “Commander’s Square.”
Using the tunnels for movement
They could also travel around through the tunnels, hide for a prolonged period if needed, or escape, the army explained.
“Hamas took enough generators and solar panels from civilians so that they could survive down there for months and even weeks,” Aharon said.
The Square was located between a high-class residential area, that includes a college, a hotel, a school for the deaf, and a fancy bridal shop.
Deputy Commander of the 401st Brigade, Lt. Col. Ido, whose full name can’t be used said, “From outside everything looks normal, everything looks like a normal city.”
A short distance away from the two schools, but in the square itself, the IDF uncovered two tunnel shafts and a tunnel-making workshop, which they showed to reporters on Tuesday afternoon, but they did not take them into the tunnels themselves.
The IDF also released to the media videos detailing their find, with shots of the underground tunnels, including one that led from a home of Sinwar’s in the square, in which a spiral staircase could bring him directly down into a concrete corridor, complete with electricity.
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The tunnels were discovered under property owned by Sinwar and Haniyeh, and allowed for Hamas leaders to travel from home to the office and to other places within the city, the army explained.
What was found in the tunnels?
One office, now filled with debris, that the army showed reporters, is believed to have been used by Deif, with officers speculating that a wheelchair found in that room, could have been his.
The tunnels had electricity, water, phones, food, solar panels, security cameras, as well as rooms, including one that was 150 meters big. Arms were also found including rockets, RPGs and nighttime equipment.
An elevator was also found leading into a tunnel, used almost exclusively by Hamas leadership, the army explained.
Ido said that right off the square, which had been booby-trapped when they arrived. They also found a workshop for building tunnels.
“There are posters of instructions of how to build, when to do, what to do. You can see all around here cement and concrete and equipment for building the tunnel inside,” Ido said as he pointed to concrete slabs. “All these are the walls for the tunnel which are taken down with a lift into the tunnels,” Ido said.
Aharon said, “it’s not possible that people did not know what was going on here.”
The army seized the tunnels and the square thanks to the work of the 162nd Division’s 401st Brigade, which worked together with the Shaldag Unit and the 13th Squadron, which had also helped fight to secure the square from Hamas terrorists these last week, gaining almost complete control of it in the last few days.
The IDF estimates that it killed some 600 Hamas terrorists during that battle.
The square after the IDF attack
On Tuesday, when reporters arrived, the square was one large empty dustbowl of brown dirt, with a mound in the center.
On top of that mound was a flagpole, from which fluttered a large Israeli flag. Next to it was a large Hanukkah menorah, which was left standing, even though the holiday was last week.
“We arrived here before the first night of Hanukkah and in a tearful ceremony, we remembered those who had fallen and everything that we endured to get here and we lit the first candle,” Aharon said.
He added that he also loved the flag, which “has become a symbol of hope” and as “type of magic.”
Some of the buildings, such as the college and the school for the deaf were standing, but damaged, and others were reduced to rubble so that a ring of destruction also surrounded the square.
Reporters entered Gaza through a coastal road, first in a jeep, open in the back so that one could see how the road leading to Gaza City, and indeed every section of the city itself that reporters saw, had only destroyed, partially destroyed or damaged buildings.
At what soldiers called “the blue beach” which had been a resort, pagodas were partially destroyed and debris littered the sand.
From there they transferred to an armored vehicle with three soldiers at the helm, two of whom Elad and Deny explained how they had been in Gaza almost from the start, with little radio or telephone contact, including with their families.
One of them Elad, had a child’s drawing pasted to the top of the vehicle, with solider and blue stars next to it and the words “take care of yourselves” written out.
Elad said he received the picture in a care package and didn’t know who the child was, but he had placed it on top of the vehicle to remind him “why we are here and what we are fighting for.”
At the Square itself, much like the road leading up to it, there were no Palestinians in sight, and it seemed as if the city had become on strange ghost town, inhabited only by soldiers and journalists.
A few tanks drove down the road, which was filled with dirt and no pavement in sight.
Journalists were allowed into on elf the building, where soldiers had taken over apartments, which were still partially or livable. In one living room, they had placed mattresses on the floor. In another, they had set up a command center around a large fancy dining table, pasting a wall size Google type map on the wall, which they had found in a nearby office.
It was clear from the furniture and the tiles and hallway decor that the building had been modern, with expensive furniture, akin to what one could find in Tel Aviv or any other Middle Eastern city.
Aharon said that the terrain for the soldiers was no longer that of a civilian city, but one of combat.
During the time the group was there, three firefights broke out within a few block's radius, during which the IDF exploded the buildings, such that dust or flames and clouds of black smoke rose from them. Gun shoots and explosions could be heard in the distance.
The terrain is now a military one and “it Is completely disconnected from any civilian life” that was held here before the war, Aharon said.
Hamas used these building “above ground and below ground” to organize attacks against Israel and now the IDF has taken them over so it can continue its war against the terror group, Aharon said.