With the intent of flooding out Hamas, Israel has started pumping seawater into Gaza tunnels.
Pumps Turned On
The Wall Street Journal reports Israel Begins Pumping Seawater Into Hamas’s Gaza Tunnels
Israel’s military has begun pumping seawater into Hamas’s vast complex of tunnels in Gaza, according to U.S. officials briefed on the Israeli military’s operations, part of an intensive effort to destroy the underground infrastructure that has underpinned the group’s operations..
A spokesperson for the Israeli defense minister declined to comment, saying the tunnel operations are classified.
Biden said that assertions have been made that “there are no hostages in any of these tunnels…But I don’t know that for a fact.” The president didn’t elaborate.
Flooding the tunnels, which would likely be a weekslong process, began around the time Israel added two more pumps to the five pumps installed last month and conducted some initial tests, U.S. officials said.
Some Biden administration officials have been concerned that using seawater might not be effective and could endanger Gaza’s freshwater supply. Egypt in 2015 used seawater to flood tunnels operated by smugglers under the Rafah border crossing with Gaza, prompting complaints from nearby farmers about damaged crops.
In addition to the seawater, the Israeli military has sought to attack the network with airstrikes and liquid explosives, and by sending in robots, dogs and drones.
Israel hopes that Hamas’s weak fighting position and the killing of around half of the group’s battalion commanders will spur lower-level fighters to surrender en masse.
Hamas can prevent that outcome, military analysts say, by holding out underneath Gaza until Israel is forced into a cease-fire, either by international pressure or in negotiations to release the hostages still held by Hamas or other groups.
Question of the Day
You do not get a vote and neither do I.
But if it was your call, Do You Support Flooding Gaza Tunnels Despite Environmental and Hostage Concerns?
A good way to kill hostages.
They WANT TO KILL THE HOSTAGES DUDE! Why, this is Bibi’s big chance. He can now turn Gaza into fucking 1945 Berlin & get rid of the “Palestinian Problem” once and for all. Btw, most of the killing of Jews was done by their own IDF. They were blowing away those concertgoers with helos and blowing them away in their own vehicles.
There needs to be a two state solution. You can’t go in and occupy a country and expect the native fuckers to just stand down and allow this passively.
What would you do. I would defend my Family & my property and lastly my country. Yeah, they’re Muslims, but they still have a right to exist and have their own property in their part of the world. This is also going to flood more Islamists into Europe AND here!
1776 wrote “There needs to be a two state solution. You can’t go in and occupy a country and expect the native fuckers to just stand down and allow this passively.”
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And yet so many on this blog have called for Ukraine to submit to Russia and give up the land that Russia annexed illegally. Do you see any dichotomy?
If a two state solution was even remotely possible it would have happened decades ago. On multiple occasions the Palestinians were offered pretty much everything they were asking for and rejected every offer. Care to guess why? That’ right! Because they never wanted a two state solution, they wanted a one state solution where they were the state. A position, by the way, that they still hold today.
A waste of water in a region rich in hydrocarbons. Get more bang for the buck with hydrogen, napalm, and detonated with willy pete to get an underground Hindenburg effect. Repeat as necessary.
Yes, nuf said.
No skin in game. Involves war and tragedy – No comment
The U.S. has had 180+ Tunnels from Mexico alone, in the last 30 or so years. What did we do? At what cost, and for how long? Flooding sounds like the quickest, safest, and pretty fool proof way of ending that threat for quite sometime.
The tunnels will fill up very slowly. No lives will be lost unless murdered by hamas. Previous flooding in wars gone by was very effective in ending them. The squeeze is on and the last stand should be quite exciting.
South Africa was never this cruel. South Africa never dropped 2,000-pound bombs on women and children.
The blacks in S.A. were not committed to exterminating the whites like Hamas is committed to exterminating the Jews….
Israel is defending themselves and in the same circumstances every other country would act the same way….
Agreed
Rabid critters don’t like water.
I’m in the US. I support minding our own damned business and ceasing to be the policeman of the world. If we’re going to talk about flooding something, how about building a moat at our southern border and flooding that. Ridiculous idea, but so is trying to maintain US hegemony over the world.
The US has no say in this tactic by Israel, but I like the moat idea a lot!
» officials have been concerned that using seawater might not be effective «
Hamas has anticipated Netanyahu’s every step.
Egypt tried flooding the tunnels multiple times.
Israel has made many attempts at decapitating the PLO/Hamas.
So Hamas is prepared for such eventualities and has taken it into account in their tunnel design. Flooding the tunnels is just another symptom of Israel’s weakness.
The seawater may however be effective for Israel’s ultimate aim, which is to get rid of the Palestinians and to make Gaza uninhabitable.
Like Rome salting Carthage.
And Isreael will maintain the humanitarian crisis until countries finally accept 2 million Palestinian refugees and Israel wipes the Gaza portion of Palestine off the face of the earth and then they direct their lebenstraum efforts to the west bank to achieve greater Israel. An expanded Isreal without Palestinians in historic Palestine is their version of a Final Solution.
I propose continued use of robots to help clear out the tunnels.
Ah, if you assume that each tunnel is 6 feet by 6 feet, and there are 100 miles of tunnels, then flooding the tunnels equals covering the entire Gaza strip to a depth of about a quarter of an inch. Even if there were 500 miles of tunnels its still equivalent to covering the Gaza with just over one inch of saltwater…. I don’t see how equates to a serious ecological problem.
Huh? There is virtually unlimited water in the Med. Israel can run the pumps as long as they need to.
There are no rules in a knife fight…particularly when the fight is existential
That’s what Hamas said too…
“Live by the sword, die by the sword”
Israel is stabbing thousands of bystanders to death, women & children, with nowhere to flee. Do we really want a world that’s an enormous knife fight?
The tunnels between Gaza and Egypt have been flooded several times before by Egypt, including with raw sewage. So all Israel is doing is attempting to flood a larger number of tunnels. It won’t cause many if any to drown unless they refuse to surface and if they surface they have less ways to attack or to evade.
Biggest risk is Hamas will intentionally leave hostages locked or chained down there to drown.
And Israel has vowed to go all Munich on Hamas leadership for all the crimes they have done. Good.
Perhaps.
But will Gaza float or sink?
Almost every moral imperative has been violated.
They should use poison gas and take advantage to violate another one.
On the other hand seawater is salty.
I believe the solution for Gaza that Israel seeks is for one like Carthage.
I don’t like that solution.
If you, your home, your property, or your family and friends were collateral damage to the US government fighting some 9/11 terrorist you wouldn’t be very happy. There is no certainty about what flooding the tunnels will do including making any farmland unfarmable or destabilizing the foundations of any buildings that are left. Just a big mess and all the kings horses and all the kings men will never be able to put it together again.
Americans too have had problems with tunnels in Vietnam. It would be interesting to know how they did proceed, and how did the Vietnamese react
No politicians were lost, so tunnel rat deaths were ok.
All of this “I stand with” and “I support” crap can go to Hell. We do not get to control what other people do. IF Israel thinks flooding tunnels is in their best interest, they will do it.
Live on 5. Protesters dressed in black have been sitting across the 110 freeway in downtown Los Angeles since 9 am or so this morning, calling for a ceasefire. CHP and police are in the process of slowly removing the protesters one at a time. A Menorah was set in one of the lanes in front of the sit in.
I was watching this foodlessness on FOX’s Live Now channel. They should be pepper spraying them, then dragging them off en masse by the hair or whatever body parts they can grab.
Here’s another idea for Israel. Since the water being released is saltwater, why not also release saltwater crocodiles into the tunnels also? That would be interesting!
I support all efforts to remove Hamas including flooding the tunnels.
The tunnels don’t necessarily have to be completely filled either. Just enough to flood them halfway should force anyone hiding out in them to exit and likely ruin/destroy anything stored on the floors of the tunnels.
My preference would be to use toxic gas instead of sea water because the sea water option is far more likely to have negative long term affects.
I must confess I am a bit surprised they can’t or aren’t using robots to go down the tunnels and detonate explosives. The police here in the US have that technology already and we know the military has better. Surprised it hasn’t been made available.
With this you enter the realm of war crimes.
It has and is. There have been stories mentioning it.
Israel is not kowtowing to the demands of the 24 hour media who want real-time details of military operations. Good for them.
From a military point of view, there is no problem about this (no war crime), provided it is announced some time before to allow evacuation. But if the work in tunnels has been done correctly, this has been probably already considered by Hamas (doors ?)
Talk about a Pyrrhic victory. Even if Israel succeeds in demolishing Hamas (an organization that was until recently supported by Netanyahu and Likud),
Israel’s reputation, and by extension the US’s, is in complete tatters. You can’t kill 15000 women and children and call yourselves moral.
Why should anyone care if they are tagged as moral or not? Does it change the interest rates they pay on borrowed money?
Speaking as a person who tries to be moral, a moral person would care if they are tagged as moral.
Un huh. So IYO, moral people are better than amoral people?
When you are fighting for your very survival morality sometimes takes a back seat. This is a topic I know something about and I can tell you Israel doesn’t view Palestinian civilians as “innocent”. Palestinian children are indoctrinated from a very young age in the ways of the jihadist. Boys are taught that murdering Jews is something they should aspire to. Girls are taught that they have a responsibility to give birth to as many future jihadists as possible. What do you do with a group of people who have sworn to eliminate you at all costs? how do you negotiate with a people who’s starting, non negotiable, position is your destruction?
Yes. I support Israel. Hamas started this and Israel is finishing it, hopefully once and for all.
Probably Adolf thought the same about Jews
Yes, but Israel started Hamas as competition to al-Fatah.
Israel & the US helped Hamas win the 2006 election.
How many Arab governments are there who got there by being elected?
The idea that Hamas started this is ludicrous: Where did all those Israeli’s come from in the first place? How did the Palestinians land up in the Gaza prison camp?
Yes I am for it. It’s the obvious answer to root Hamas out. The leaders of course are not there. The are, or were in Qatar living in luxury but now I hear some have moved to Algeria and Turkey. I wouldn’t bet on their continued existence.
They settled in Qatar with the approval of the United States
The leaders and I expect most of the fighters are no longer in the tunnels. It’s probably not hard to just bury / hide your weapon and blend in as a refugee with the rest of the population. Once Israel leaves, you can come back and collect your weapons.
Only those with death wishes are hiding out in the tunnels now.
I agree with whatever it takes to eliminate Hamas. There is no going back.
Israel offered to halt the bombing and assault on Gaza if all hostages were released. That has not happened. Why?
I wonder ( and will probably never find out) what the present hostages would choose: death or continued captivity, with all that infers.
So far the captives have been released no worse for wear.
Why would they prefer death? Some have been on video with very negative tirades about Netanyahu.
No worse for wear?! Let’s see you get torn from your home after watching your friends, neighbors and family members shot, raped, tortured and murdered. Then dragged across the fence line and beaten and spit on and verbally abused by the Gazan “civilians” to be held in a tunnel under constant threat of death, never knowing if you will ever see your family again and see if you come out “no worse for wear”. Out of all the silly comments you have made on this thread this one takes the cake.
Obviously because Israel has taken more hostages than they have released since October. They still hold maybe 8000.
There isn’t a pathway to getting the hostages back alive.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas. Having hostage human shields makes it harder to kill Hamas.
If Hamas leaders trade hostages to end the conflict, Israel will later assassinate those Hamas leaders and all new leaders that replace them.
This was standard operating procedure by Israel until the mid 90s, and the only proven way to reduce terror attacks.
If IDF succeeds in attacking Hamas leadership locations, Hamas will kill the hostages and blame it on IDF.
I have to say I wonder…. Why didn’t Israel assassinate all the Hamas leadership years ago? They might be harder to take out than one might think. And, I suspect it’s a situation like WW II: you could assassinate Hitler and Goering, etc., but there are still six million soldiers in the Wehrmacht that are going to fight on (at least until early 1944…). I think the only way for Israel to win is to kill an awful lot of people who are willing to die, unfortunately.
Obviously one of the main aims of the Hamas raids was to obtain prisoners (from kibbutzim that Israel was using as human shields for their military outposts).
Hamas offered to release all the prisoners if Israel would let go theirs.
Then they offered to release all women, children, and civilians in exchange for all Palestinian women/children held captive.
Israel said no. They are obviously not interested and have other aims: They think this is a golden opportunity to get rid of the Palestinians once and for all.
Killing the leaders as a solution is based on a faulty view of what is going on.
what an incredibly naïve view. The military installations are there to protect the kibbutzim from the very thing that happened on Oct 7. The Israelis got complacent, let their guard down and paid the price. If the goal of the Hamas raids was just to secure hostages for negotiation purposes that could have certainly been done without the wholesale rape, murder, torture and incredible brutality that was engaged in by Hamas operatives on that day. As far as getting rid of the Palestinians once and for all, how silly. If that were the case there would be a whole lot more than 15k dead after 2 months of airstrikes that have dropped many tens of thousands of tons of high explosives on a very densely packed population. Israel is clearly not trying to kill civilians. By way of comparison, 15k dead civilians was a slow night during the deliberate bombing of population centers by the allies in WW2.
These tunnels have no purpose other than to attack Israel. Therefore, they are a legitimate target in war.
“there are no hostages in any of these tunnels…but I don’t know that for a fact” is funny way for Biden to say he has no clue.
It’s also the way for Biden to admit that he has no influence over the Zionists.
Tough one. Benefits – it likely reduces the amount of military action on the surface, and probably saves civilian lives, where the loss has been atrocious (and potentially involving war crimes). Cost – it degrades the area for living & agriculture later on and makes it less viable long term. On balance, I probably lean in favor. If you’re a thinking person, the calculus here is not simple – short term gains for long term costs, which is a tradeoff that humans have never been super great at.
Is anyone concerned about the environmental damage that is being done by bombing the crap out of Hamas and Russia? The bombing that you and I support with our tax dollars.
The question is too simplistic. It ignores the horrors committed by Humas, how Humas uses civilians as shields and the dangers of negotiating horrific people. It also ignores all of the information about the structure of the tunnels Humas has built. Humas has bragged about the tunnels being built out of concrete so there will be no cave ins. The IDF has reported on the quality of the cement and other products used to create the underground infrastructure. So, YES, turn on the water and let all of those fine tunnels be turned into water pipes. Do not allow Humas and others to create hysteria about some environmental disaster.
It would be better to render them unsafe to use. Set depths charges in the water and set them off when the tunnels are full.Perhaps humanely put occupants to sleep first with CO2.
CO2 is not human because it causes hyperventilation. I’m guessing that Israel has access to the knockout gas that Russia used in that theater some years ago, and the water is a diversion.
End of the day, America will get a bill for the damages, we always do. Corrupt officials, Israeli, Palestinian, and American, will steal everything not nailed down. And politicians will praise the taxpayers for being generous while OPEC muslim nations gouge us on gas prices to rebuilt what we helped blowup. And the Israelis will drown the hostages and rescue the dead bodies…We should leave and cut all ties with the Middle East. Just my humble opinion.
Remember 911,stop this Neville Chamberlain Thinking; stick your head in the sand Thinking;Anyone who does not believe what they believe and you must accept thier leaders;You will be killed! They’re at war with the whole world! Remember Peace in our Time! B.S. Also ,Wake up my fellow Americans, Get energy independence, Hundred years is nothing Thousand Years or a million years,Earth will change no matter what we do, our American leaders have to change their thinking, the enemy is growing from within, and your thinking by ahh let’s cut n run from the Middle East, will not keep America safe and free ! At the end of the day! Speak up, Fight back or be killed ! NEVER AGAIN!
1. Israel has proven it can defend itself.
2. US meddling arguably made the situation worse.
3. Trump proposed a ridiculously one-sided (two state solution) that was essentially a one state solution with Israel in total control.
4. The US backs Israel no matter what it does
5. This is not a WWII setup, not even close. See point #1.
Hamas is evil, there is no debate over that. But should the US take Israel’s side in everything? I say no, even if flooding of tunnels is justified.
US meddling made matters worse in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine. I suggest we stop meddling.
You should run for public office in the House or Senate Mish. Then you might have some influence on the situation.
Israel is evil, there is no debate over that.
9/11 was by the Saudis after generations of abuse…by the way Neville was right and bought a defenseless England time to re-arm.
Yes. Whatever works to eliminate Hamas, or ‘flush out’ Hamas. Clearing tunnels with IDF soldiers (vs. seawater) would cost more Israeli lives than the hostages who might (or might not) be harmed by flooded tunnels. Also, just the threat of flooding tunnels could save more lives, as Hamas terrorists might give themselves up, rather than die by fighting or drowning.
OH, you are in the Brain-washed sector of the American Public that agreed that dropping the Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki “saved lives.”
Your comment inferring that dropping the atomic bombs in Japan did not save lives ignores how many American and Japanese lives would have been lost by a land invasion of Japan. It also ignores all of the atrocities committed by the Japanese Army in places like Korea, China and Bataan. The Japanese demonstrated brutality with which Humas would be very comfortable.
And Chinese lives.
“Hamas terrorists might give themselves up”
Do you understand the concept of religious martyrdom?
If they give themselves up, they lose their crack at those promised 72 virgins!
https://cartoonmovement.com/cartoon/72-virgins-allah
Modern Israel is a country born out of European madness.
It’s continued that madness since its birth.
Yes
Let’s face it: Whether the hostages are dead or alive, policy should not be set on that basis because to do so encourages further hostage taking down the road. Look at all the previous examples of Israel being brought to her knees by a small handful of hostages.
They’re finding murdered hostages as they make their way through Gaza. If they rescue any that’s a blessing, but no let-up in the war, no restrictions on military means should be considered for their sake. We don’t even have proof of life for any of them. The Red Cross doesn’t even demand to see them.
As for the ecological considerations, anything that makes Gaza unlivable is probably for the best. Nobody willing to live in peace with Israel is going to live there anyway so it’s best that it just become like Pripyat – an unlivable monument to human folly.
It sounds to me like Israel has had enough of the nearly constant terrorist attacks from their Southern border and have decided to solve the problem once and for all.
I support Israel’s right to deal with the problem however they see fit. I fear though, they are solving a problem and creating new ones:
Number 3 is going to reverberate for probably the next 100 years. It’s going to cause a political earthquake in the Middle East. Israel is playing chess with many other players and I fear it may have moved it’s queen out in the open without support.
Once Gaza is leveled and the water table polluted, the only option is for the Gaza Palestinians to go to the West Bank (already overcrowded itself) or Jordan, which already has 2.5 million Palestinians or to the Sinai, but Egypt doesn’t want them there.
A play on the old Roman act of salting the earth?
Perhaps sequestering CO2 wasn’t cost-effective or maybe they couldn’t find enough to sufficiently displace the O2 within the tunnels?
For #3 – They should go to California, New York and Illinois. These states have the great warm hearted sanctuary cities of the West. No one should have to suffer or feel any discomfort. Rationality is so 20th Century.
Yes
Yes. Remember, Hamas continues to fire rockets into Israel; hundreds of rockets each day. The total rockets fired is approaching 12,000 since October 7th. The rocket launchers are placed in schools, and next to hospitals, UN buildings and in residential areas. Going from building to building to disable the rocket launchers costs many Israeli soldiers lives each day. Mass bombing is out of the question due to the certain loss of civilian lives. This water option will force the Hamas soldiers out of hiding while costing fewer Israeli and Palestinian lives.
I support a two state solution.
At this point I can’t believe someone is still talking about a two state solution. Over the years Israel has offered a two state solution, land for peace time and time and time again, always rejected by the PLO and Hamas. People in the West and around the world do not understand that there is absolutely nothing Israel could offer Hamas for peace, nothing! Hamas doesn’t want peace ever, they want dead Jews, Israel wiped off the face of the earth! This is pure evil, antisemitism. I wonder do people know most all Hamas leaders are billionaires?
Wouldn’t it be a 3-state solution now, given that the West Bank and Gaza both have separate governments? In any case, a 2-state or 3-state solution would not be a solution and is a non sequitur.
I advocate the Three State Solution.
Yes
Yes
Damn straight . Hostages are probably dead already or will be soon. You can’t negotiate with people like Hamas who do the horrible things they did on October 7th and have promised to them again. Wipe them out and the United States should fully back Israel with financial aid.
The US should provide zero financial aid to Israel. They have plenty of money.