War goes underground in Gaza as toll mounts

As no soldiers or uniformed police officers are seen in the streets of Gaza city, the Palestinians are waging their main fights against Israel through underground tunnels.

While listening to one of their friends, who had lost his two relatives a few hours before, a group of old militants was acting as if nothing extraordinary had happened. When asked about the difference between this fight compared to those in 2002 and 2012, Muhammad Suleiman said they had managed to disperse the rocket launching pads across the Gaza Strip thanks to the tunnels. He said they had placed the rocket launching pads near the Israeli border via these tunnels, rather than installing them on the coast of the sea.

These remarks from Palestinian militants on the significance of the tunnels was confirmed by a statement from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on July 18, which said they had uncovered a number of these tunnels, which are “as elaborate as a labyrinth.”

“Beneath the Gaza Strip lies an underground Gaza, an offensive tunnel network that is almost entirely hidden on the surface and as elaborate as a labyrinth. Today IDF soldiers discovered 10 of these tunnels and over 20 points of access and it is merely the first day of the ground phase of the operation,” the IDF statement said.

“Hamas’ underground tunnels are made for kidnapping and murdering Israelis. That’s why we are destroying them,” the IDF spokesman also said on the Israeli army’s official Twitter account.

On July 20, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the tunnels were constructed by Hamas in “an obvious effort” to try to kidnap Israelis, adding that Israel had “every right in...