Newly released reports suggest that Israel plans to use millions of cubic meters of water to flood alleged tunnels of Hamas, a move that can cause water shortage in Gaza.
According to a report by The Wall Street Journal released this Tuesday, Israel is working on a large system of pumps to use millions of cubic meters of water to flood tunnels allegedly used by Hamas under the Gaza strip.
Citing US officials familiar with the matter, the WSJ report noted that the Israeli military has completed the set-up of “at least five pumps about a mile north of the Al-Shati refugee camp” on the Gaza coast to carry out the plan within the coming weeks.
It is worth mentioning here that Israel still has nearly 130 captives held by Hamas, and carrying out such a plan may endanger the lives of the Israeli detainees. The report also noted that it was not clear whether Israel would consider using the pumps before all captives held by Hamas in the besieged enclave were released. Israel continues to hold thousands of Palestinians captive in its prisons.
Declining to comment on the report of the flooding plan, an Israeli army official said, “The [Israeli army] is operating to dismantle Hamas’s terror capabilities in various ways, using different military and technological tools.” The WSJ report then revealed that Israeli officials had informed their US counterparts of their intention to conduct such a plan last month,
After the seven-day truce between Hamas and Israel ended on Friday Israel resumed bombing both the north and south of the strip, despite telling Palestinians to move south for safety. The ground invasion has also made life for Gazans like a never-ending nightmare. On Monday, Israeli ground forces began operations in southern Gaza, even though they had not taken full control of northern Gaza, where Israeli ground operations began on 27 October.
Flooding plan will cause water shortage for Palestinians, experts say
Following the WSJ report on Israel’s plan to flood Hamas tunnels using so much water, environmental experts called on Israel the same day to carefully weigh the long-term environmental implications of the plan in the Gaza Strip, even if it is to be carried out using seawater.
Prof. (Emer.) Eilon Adar of the Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in southern Israel was the first expert to ring the alarm. “Gaza is home to more than two million people and is one of the most densely populated places on earth. The enclave’s only sweet-water supply comes from a shallow aquifer running parallel to the Mediterranean coast. That has been so over-pumped and the subterranean water levels have dropped so far that seawater has entered the aquifer and mixed with the little sweet-water that remains,” he said Tuesday.
Adar also warned that “even before the war, most Gazans relied on private water tankers and the yield of small desalination plants for drinking water. Therefore, further potential ecological damage to Gaza’s aquifer by flooding the tunnels would depend on the quantity of water and the reach.”
The environmental expert also asserted that if Israel carries out the plan, it means several million cubic meters of water will be pumped into the tunnels, the negative impact of which on groundwater quality would last for several generations,” he said. In such a scenario, Adar continued, Israel would hardly feel the effect ‘simply because the coastal aquifer’s water flows from Israel to Gaza not the other way round.”
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