The Media Line: Why Are 60% of Gaza’s Tunnels Intact, and Can Israel Destroy Them? 

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Why Are 60% of Gaza’s Tunnels Intact, and Can Israel Destroy Them? 

Israel is directing the IDF in Gaza’s “yellow zone” to make tunnel demolition its central mission under a US-brokered ceasefire while coordinating details with Washington 

By Keren Setton/The Media Line 

Israel will make dismantling Hamas’ vast tunnel network its top battlefield priority inside Gaza’s “yellow zone,” Defense Minister Israel Katz said Saturday, asserting in a post on X that about 60% of the tunnels still exist—two years after the Oct. 7, 2023 attack that triggered the war and reshaped the region. 

Under a US-brokered ceasefire agreed two weeks ago and backed by several Arab states, Israeli forces pulled back to a “yellow zone,” a belt along Gaza’s northern, southern, and eastern edges inside the territory. Katz framed tunnel destruction as Israel’s strategic “super goal,” arguing that neutralizing subterranean infrastructure now is essential to prevent Hamas from regrouping under the truce and to set conditions for longer-term security arrangements. 

“I have instructed the IDF to prioritize the destruction of the tunnels as the central task in the yellow zone currently under our control,” Katz wrote on X. “This is being done alongside protecting soldiers and communities, and in parallel with discussions with US representatives … to thoroughly address dismantling terror tunnels in areas under their responsibility, alongside disarming Hamas.” He did not provide independent data supporting the “60%” figure, and Israeli officials have issued varying estimates over time. 

Hamas built a multi-layered underground system commonly referred to as “the metro,” with command posts, weapons manufacturing sites, storage areas, and holding locations for hostages. The network enables fighters and materiel to move between nodes using thousands of shafts buried in dense urban areas. “No one knows the exact extent of the tunnel network to begin with,” said Guy Aviad, a military historian and expert on Hamas, telling The Media Line the network is unprecedented and a “game changer” in Hamas’ warfare against Israel. “It cancels out Israel’s military advantage,” he said. “Tunnels are hard to locate, and surveillance methods are almost irrelevant.” 

Yehuda Kfir, a civil engineer and expert in underground warfare who served as a senior operational construction officer in the Israel Defense Forces, said Western militaries have a “technological gap” in the subterranean domain. “The Israeli, American, and other Western military technologies are based and focused almost solely on air and ground abilities and not on the underground,” Kfir told The Media Line. He noted that other militaries outside the West invest more deliberately in tunnel warfare capabilities. 

Hamas has used tunnels inside Gaza since the 1980s for smuggling from Egypt and later for offensive operations into Israel. During Operation Protective Edge in 2014, the IDF said it destroyed 32 cross-border offensive tunnels but did not target the internal grid, which remains the backbone of Hamas’ military operations. In 2021, during a shorter round of fighting, Israel said a massive air campaign destroyed more than 100 kilometers of offensive tunnels. “The truth was a bit different,” Aviad said. “The current war proved how far Israel actually was from this.” After that round, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar—assassinated by Israel last year—claimed Israel had damaged only about 3% of Gaza’s tunnels and boasted the system stretched roughly 500 kilometers. Those assertions were never independently verified. 

As the 2023–25 war unfolded, Israeli officials offered shifting assessments of network size and damage. “There was a lot of confusion in the previous decade on how to deal with this issue,” Aviad said. He added that a large share of tunnels remain, particularly under Gaza City and central areas where the IDF did not conduct sustained ground operations, and that damaged sections can be bypassed or repaired during lulls. Kfir cautioned against focusing on percentages. “It’s not about what percentage has been damaged or not,” he said. “The real question is, what is Hamas doing with the tunnels that are not known?” 

The second phase of the ceasefire, which has yet to be implemented, stipulates that Hamas will disarm. The publicly available text does not explicitly address the tunnel network, even though tunnels enable command, logistics, and attacks. “Hamas uses the tunnels to fortify its rule over Gaza,” Kfir said. “The underground sphere allows the movement to survive; it is where it can store huge amounts of weapons and can use the tunnels as launch pads for attacks into Israel.” Katz’s push puts the tunnels at the center of Israeli operational planning inside areas it still holds. But achieving full dismantlement presents both tactical and legal constraints: the networks run beneath civilian infrastructure, complicating detection and neutralization and engaging obligations under international humanitarian law related to distinction, proportionality, and precautions in attack. 

Experts say traditional airborne intelligence and precision munitions are poorly matched to concealed, reinforced corridors cut through sand and urban substrata. Ground-penetrating radar degrades in mixed media; seismic and acoustic sensing are difficult to interpret in dense cities; flooding or thermobaric options pose civilian risks and may leave usable bypasses. “Israel needs to develop a way to control Hamas’ tunnels,” Kfir said. “It needs to start accustoming itself to operating in the underground. This requires a shift in the thinking of the military industries and in the strategic planning.” That will likely mean a blend of persistent “find-and-fix” operations, hardened monitoring of known shafts, specialized engineering units, and new detection suites—coupled with mechanisms under the truce to address areas outside Israeli control. Katz said conversations with US counterparts are focused on “finding a way to thoroughly address the dismantling and destruction of all terror tunnels … alongside disarming Hamas.” 

The sheer number of shafts discovered during the war shocked Israeli officials. “During the war, the IDF found thousands of tunnel shafts, way more than was estimated,” Aviad said. The scale has also prompted debate over civilian awareness. On Oct. 7, thousands of Gazans who were not members of Hamas crossed the border and looted Israeli homes, and some of the roughly 250 hostages taken that day were held by Palestinian families. Whether and to what extent the general public knew about the underground system remains contested; Kfir noted that large networks can be built clandestinely. Citing North Korea as an example, he said, “It is impossible to know what is under the shaft, especially only by looking at its opening.” 

Aviad was blunt about the scope of the task: “There is no way to reach every single shaft without completely controlling the territory.” With Israel already withdrawn from most of Gaza under the deal—and likely to exit fully if implementation proceeds—the IDF’s stated goal will collide with hard geographic limits. Still, Israeli officials argue that prioritizing demolition where possible now will reduce Hamas’ capacity to regenerate under any post-war arrangement. “If the US and Israel will not address this now, it [Israel] will lose the next war,” Kfir said. “This is a continuous historic failure of understanding the significance [of the] underground sphere in warfare.”