IDF Has No Plans to Enter Hamas’ Tunnels, So What Are the Options? HotAir

Finally, there are two other options designed to force Hamas fighters to abandon the tunnels. One is to use smoke bombs, literally smoking them out. The other is to flood the tunnels with sea water.

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The geography of Gaza argues strongly for the stratagem of flooding the tunnels. It would force the enemy above ground where they can more easily be destroyed, dramatically reduce the Israeli casualties required to accomplish that task and resolve the problem of dealing with parts of the tunnels that are too deep to destroy through bombing. Most importantly, flooding is a permanent or near-permanent solution to the Gaza tunnel problem. Once accomplished, pumping them out enough to be usable again would be both extremely costly and especially in conjunction with bombing exceptionally difficult. The timing of executing a flooding strategy is flexible; some could be flooded now, others later, and still others once they re discovered.

The engineering is straightforward. Egypt flooded thirty-seven cross-border tunnels in southern Gaza back in 2015 in what stands as a practical proof of concept in this location. Seawater from the Mediterranean would be pumped directly into the tunnel openings through short pipelines&

Rough calculations indicate that if a single pipe were used for each of eleven tunnels, with each pipe pumping at a very conservative 100 gallons per minute, it would take about seven and a half months for all eleven tunnel networks to fill. Pumping water at ten times that rate, however, is routinely done today everywhere from wastewater treatment plants to oil field operations.

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The author of that piece points out that once the narrow tunnels are half full, they would be unusable. Israel would need to secure an area to run the pipelines for a few weeks. That probably wouldn t be easy but perhaps better than fighting Hamas in the tunnels.

via hotair.com

Sea water sounds like the best option to me. Smoke also sounds like it might work. Why not both?