Israel under attack from hamas, war declared.

[jackspratt]

So we can safely say, based on the evidence so far, or lack there of, that there was no command centre situated beneath the Al-Shifa hospital, justifying the level of attack on the hospital by the IDF in 2023.

[Udon Map]

Why would Hamas need such a thing as an 'interrogation centre' inside their own country? Who exactly are they 'interrogating'?

And why?

Reread the AI reports/links. They're doing this to their own people, the Palestinians.

[tamada]

Why would Hamas need such a thing as an 'interrogation centre' inside their own country? Who exactly are they 'interrogating'?

And why?

Reread the AI reports/links. They're doing this to their own people, the Palestinians.

Apologies, but I was asking the other chap.

[tamada]

So we can safely say, based on the evidence so far, or lack there of, that there was no command centre situated beneath the Al-Shifa hospital, justifying the level of attack on the hospital by the IDF in 2023.

So what justified the level of Hamas's attack on Israel early morning of 7 October?

[Laan Yaa Mo]

This is what you call a tunnel! Apparently, it is true that there are tunnel links to schools, mosques, homes, playgrounds and hospitals for the use of Hamas.

Inside sprawling Hamas tunnel that you could drive a car through

The huge subterranean system used by the terrorists after the October 7 attacks is spread out beneath Gaza City with entrances in schools, mosques and hospitals — and the IDF says it has discovered the biggest yet

Some Israeli intelligence officers admit that they were taken aback when they discovered the size and complexity of the tunnel network

Sunday December 17 2023, 4.25pm GMT, The Sunday Times

The Israeli military has exposed what it claims to be the largest Hamas tunnel under Gaza that it has discovered to date.

At one end the tunnel reaches just 400 metres (1,312 ft) south of the Erez border crossing with Israel, one of the targets that Hamas attacked on October 7.

The tunnel, wide enough for a car to drive through, was the personal project, according to Israeli intelligence, of Hamas’s operations chief in northern Gaza, Mahmoud Sinwar, younger brother of Yihya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in Gaza.

Play Video

The IDF claimed it had obtained a Hamas video showing militants digging tunnels under Israel
It was discovered after Israel’s recent ground invasion of Gaza. Israeli special forces located nearby shafts that led to the main tunnel. Hamas documents and videos captured in Gaza also alerted the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) to its location. After having secured and cleared the tunnel of explosives, involving a skirmish in which Hamas fighters hiding in one of the tunnel branches were killed, the IDF is preparing the tunnel for demolition. Before that takes place, they gave a group of journalists a tour of the tunnel’s main entrance.

I’d seen Hamas tunnel shafts in Gaza before. Narrow affairs discovered under buildings and sheds where they had been concealed. This one was of a different scale — and we were walking into it, as if it were a pedestrian underpass.

It wasn’t only the size that was striking but also the evenness of the walls, the gradual degree of the slope going down and the tidy concrete arches propping it up. Along the walls and ceiling were water and ventilation pipes and wiring for electricity and communications systems. Every few metres were storage alcoves. Some still had equipment such as canisters of cooking gas in them.

In another place it could have been a service tunnel of a public transport system. Instead it was part of a massive subterranean construction project carried out by Hamas. This specific tunnel, which according to the IDF extends four kilometres under the small town of Beit Hanoun and then under Gaza City, is part of the much wider network dug to shelter Hamas fighters, launch attacks on Israeli troops and hide hostages. And in nearly two months of operations on and under the ground, the IDF has discovered and started to destroy only part of that network, which is estimated to be hundreds of kilometres in length in total.

As the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza enters its 11th week, with intense fighting still raging in parts of a nearly-destroyed Gaza City and down south in Khan Yunis, where the Hamas leadership is believed to be holed up, the tunnels are one of the main reasons why the war is still going on.

The IDF, one of the world’s most advanced militaries, with overwhelming advantages over Hamas in every parameter of firepower and personnel, has been sucked into an underground battle of dimensions that are unprecedented in the history of warfare.

Back in this particular tunnel, a senior IDF officer explained how Israel’s enemy was able to build such a sophisticated facility, which could have only been excavated using heavy mechanical equipment. “Hamas used every bit of humanitarian aid that went into Gaza,” he said. “Building materials that went in to build homes and schools were used instead for this tunnel, which cost them millions. Even oxygen that was meant for the hospitals was diverted for use here.”

The tunnel demonstrates the difficulty the IDF is facing in carrying out the stated objectives of its war in Gaza — to destroy Hamas’s fighting capability.

The tunnel has water and ventilation pipes and wiring for electricity and communications systems
Parts of it, extending miles under the suburbs of Gaza City, were used in the second stage of Hamas’s attack on Israeli border communities and military bases on October 7, when returning Hamas attackers used them to shelter from Israeli airstrikes and hide Israeli hostages.

In the initial attacks that morning, tunnels were not used. Hamas broke out of Gaza through dozens of breaches in the fence created by bulldozers and explosives, and by using motor-gliders to fly into Israeli territory. The tunnels were a refuge to escape back into and prepare for the Israeli assault.

While there were no illusions in the IDF about the extent of the tunnel network under Gaza and the threat it presented to any Israeli manoeuvre on the ground, some Israeli intelligence officers admit that even they were taken aback when they discovered its size and complexity.

In the years leading up to the October 7 attacks, Israel had success in locating cross-border tunnels and destroying them. An underground obstacle with a network of geological sensors prevented Hamas from building ones under the border.

Israeli soldiers patrol a tunnel Hamas militants used to attack the Erez crossing in northern Gaza, according to the IDF
Israeli soldiers operate in what Israel’s military says is an iron-girded tunnel designed by Hamas to disgorge carloads of Palestinian fighters for a surprise storming of the border

But in the rear headquarters of one of the Israeli brigades operating in Gaza City, a senior officer gestured to a map on which the assumed location of tunnels were marked in red lines, resembling the map of an underground public transport system.

“That’s no longer relevant!” he exclaimed, throwing the map off the table. Not only has the IDF discovered tunnels it was not aware of before the ground manoeuvre it has also found many shafts. They have been surprised to find entrances to tunnels concealed in the basements of civilian buildings, residential blocks, schools, mosques and hospitals. More than 1,000 of them have been found so far in and around Gaza City.

When a shaft is discovered soldiers are not allowed into the tunnel. Combat engineering teams and sappers are called in to inspect, using various types of robotic vehicles and dogs carrying cameras. “Our first priority is to try to work out if there are people inside and whether it’s a main tunnel or just a branch,” said an Israeli combat engineer. “If it doesn’t need further investigation, we’ll either use a bulldozer or chuck in a mine to destroy the shaft. Sometimes, though, especially with main tunnels, the treatment is more complex.”

Either way, this is a time-consuming exercise to carry out on a battlefield, and the main reason Israeli generals insist that the fighting on the ground in Gaza will take “months” if Israel is to have a chance of achieving its objective. In some cases, shafts were discovered by chance when heavy Israeli vehicles suddenly found themselves stuck in deep holes on roads that had been ploughed by tank tracks.

The IDF has been sucked into an underground battle of dimensions that are unprecedented in the history of warfare

Men were led out from tunnels by Israeli soldiers near Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza
One such armoured convoy found itself stuck in the middle of the Al-Shati neighbourhood in Gaza City at midnight a few weeks ago as the front wheel of the lead truck suddenly sank into the ground. It had to be towed out while the convoy found an alternative route.

The likelihood of Hamas fighters emerging from an undiscovered shaft at any moment has made Israeli troops jumpy and has created a number of “friendly fire” incidents in which soldiers have been killed by their own comrades. It is likely to have contributed to the incident on Friday morning in which Israeli troops killed three Israeli hostages.

• How did the IDF end up killing Israeli hostages?

Some of the hostages who were released in November during the week-long truce with Hamas reported that they had been held in tunnels. That knowledge makes the decision to demolish specific tunnels even more difficult.

While there have been reports of Israel planning to pump water from the nearby Mediterranean to flood the tunnels, this is probably psychological warfare aimed at forcing the Hamas fighters above ground but unlikely to happen, at least not a large-scale solution, partly because of the fear of drowning the hostages and the sheer size of the tunnel network.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/insi ... -5h2lh62rw

[jackspratt]

Why would Hamas need such a thing as an 'interrogation centre' inside their own country? Who exactly are they 'interrogating'?

And why?

Reread the AI reports/links. They're doing this to their own people, the Palestinians.

Apologies, but I was asking the other chap.

A question better directed at Hamas.

[jackspratt]

So we can safely say, based on the evidence so far, or lack there of, that there was no command centre situated beneath the Al-Shifa hospital, justifying the level of attack on the hospital by the IDF in 2023.

So what justified the level of Hamas's attack on Israel early morning of 7 October?

Nothing.

But great deflection.

[tamada]

So we can safely say, based on the evidence so far, or lack there of, that there was no command centre situated beneath the Al-Shifa hospital, justifying the level of attack on the hospital by the IDF in 2023.

So what justified the level of Hamas's attack on Israel early morning of 7 October?

Nothing.

But great deflection.

OK, the IDF systematically destroyed hospitals and killed civilians in Ghaza solely because they don't care.

Got it.

[jackspratt]

I very much doubt that you have.

But feel free to press on.

In the meantime, my question about the "Al-Shifa command centre" seems to have been answered.

[tamada]

I very much doubt that you have.

But feel free to press on.

In the meantime, my question about the "Al-Shifa command centre" seems to have been answered.

It has?

Great!

[AlexO]

So we can safely say, based on the evidence so far, or lack there of, that there was no command centre situated beneath the Al-Shifa hospital, justifying the level of attack on the hospital by the IDF in 2023.

Pratty
Very short memory. Around 15 AK's and numbers of Nonhospital issued computers found. You previously asked what size is a command center which I answered in wording that I assumed even you could understand.
As for your alleged attack by the IDF. How many people died? How many nurses were raped? How many children were murdered? Was the hospital destroyed or is it still operating as a medical facility?
Driving a tank past a hospital hardly constitutes an attack in anyone's language.
Showing levels of anti-Jew everything again.

[jackspratt]

Obviously you didn't understand the article you linked to, Alex.

Feel free to read this one https://www.economist.com/the-economist ... -justified

Was Israel’s attack on al-Shifa hospital justified?
Israel has so far offered little evidence that it was. More may yet turn up

[Whistler]

Nobody should feel comfortable about what is happening in Gaza, but to sheet 100% blame on Israel is terribly simplistic.

1. The Jewish people do deserve a Homeland, Palestine was not a cohesive nation that was invaded by the Zionists. My understanding is that after the Ottoman collapsed many parts of the Middle East were not nations per se, so the Balfour Declaration was not unreasonable. However from the start of Jewish people moving back, the Arabs have opposed it and violently. They want a homeland for Arab people's but no homeland for Jewish people. No wonder this contributed hatred that has led to Israel being overly harsh.

2. Iran with their puppets Hamas and Hezbollah have always rejected a two state solution, constantly pressed for the elimination of Israel, this time Israel has decided that it is a no holds barred war against these groups.

3. Hamas is not a legitimate upholder of Palestinian interests. They are thugs and murderers in Gaza, they don't care about the Palestinian people any more than Israel. They want power and self enrichment, their leaders live in luxury while the people they claim to represent live in squalor.

4. Hamas probably underestimated the level off retaliation from Israel, but regardless they knew it would be forceful and the Palestinian people would bear that retaliation.

Awful though the attacks on Gaza have been, if it wipes out Hamas, it just might allow a two state policy to come into being.

There are no good guys in this war, both sides helped create this flare up, very hard to point the finger at any one side and say you are to blame are to blame

[Laan Yaa Mo]

A nice attempt to analyse the Israel-Hamas conflict, but it seems a bit simplistic, and contains a number of grammatical errors that sometimes obscures the point you are trying to make.

For example, I am not sure what 'sheet' means in, 'but to sheet 100% blame on Israel is terribly simplistic.'

1. I am sure you mean the Ottoman Empire, not a sofa (ottoman). Is Israel acting too harshly? 'Contributed hatred'? Please explain.

2. I don't think Israel is waging a no holds barred war against Hezbollah yet.

3. I don't think all of the people in Gaza lived in squalor.

4. I am not sure that Hamas underestimated the Israeli response. I believe they were counting on it. Remember your statement about Hamas not caring about the people of Palestine. Hamas seems to be winning the social media war.

Anyway, you seem to be on the right track.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

This may be old news, but it is a useful reminder of how Hamas receives funding, and why some countries support Hamas, and how and why Hamas leaders are able to live high on the hog.

https://nationalpost.com/news/world/isr ... amas-money

[AlexO]

Obviously you didn't understand the article you linked to, Alex.

Feel free to read this one https://www.economist.com/the-economist ... -justified

Was Israel’s attack on al-Shifa hospital justified?
Israel has so far offered little evidence that it was. More may yet turn up

Pratty
You obviously have difficulty understanding the difference between entering and attacking.
"Israeli air-force commando unit entered one wing of the hospital."
The article also try's to use clever wordplay using "major command center" something the Israelis have never described It as.
Need to come up with something better to justify your hatred or perhaps Hamas only entered Israel on7th Oct.

[jackspratt]

Parse to your heart's content, Alex.

The message in the article is pretty clear - at least to those capable of understanding it.

[AlexO]

I will ask you once again Pratty.
How many Doctors, nurses, patients were killed, raped, beheaded or taken hostage in the alleged attack on the hospital by the IDF and is the hospital still operating as a hospital not just a ruin.
Surely you are capable of understanding the question and can provide factual evidence to confirm your propaganda.

[Sport]

I will ask you once again Pratty.
How many Doctors, nurses, patients were killed, raped, beheaded or taken hostage in the alleged attack on the hospital by the IDF and is the hospital still operating as a hospital not just a ruin.
Surely you are capable of understanding the question and provide factual evidence to confirm your propaganda.

Yeah, I would like to know as well.

[jackspratt]

I will ask you once again Pratty.
How many Doctors, nurses, patients were killed, raped, beheaded or taken hostage in the alleged attack on the hospital by the IDF and is the hospital still operating as a hospital not just a ruin.
Surely you are capable of understanding the question and can provide factual evidence to confirm your propaganda.

No one has suggested any of the above happened, Alex - so you will need to look for a new red herring to flounder (excuse the pun) about with.