A Palestinian environmental expert said on Wednesday that Israel’s flooding of the resistance tunnels in Gaza with seawater will make the Strip an unlivable area for up to 100 years.
Abdel Rahman Al-Tamimi, director of the Palestinian Hydrologists Group (the largest non-governmental organization working to monitor pollution in the Palestinian territories), told Anadolu Agency that talking about flooding the tunnel network is difficult, but not impossible.
He added, “Flooding the tunnel network will face many challenges, the first of which is are they connected? Is their floor sandy or cement? Has the resistance dug wells to leak rainwater, or any attempt to flood the tunnels? All of these challenges indicate that the matter is not easy, but rather complex, but at the same time not impossible”.
The Palestinian environmental expert added that Israel needs 40 days to flood the tunnels, whose length – according to what is common knowledge – reaches about 450 kilometers.
Environmental disaster
Regarding the effects of flooding the tunnels, Al-Tamimi explained that if Israel succeeds in its plan, this will lead to multiple environmental disasters, the first of which is the contamination of the already polluted groundwater, and the accumulation of salt will greatly kill the soil and cause it to dissolve, which will lead to collapses in the soil, which means the demolition of thousands of homes. Palestinian territories in the densely populated sector.
He continued, if the water and soil become polluted, people will become trapped in all forms of pollution, including drinking water and agricultural products, which lead to environmental effects on health. Thus, the Gaza Strip will become an area that is repulsive to habitation, and it will take about 100 years to get rid of the environmental effects of this war.
He warned that the ongoing war on Gaza has fatal effects on the environment, explaining that many of the metals resulting from solid waste, others resulting from phosphorus bombs, and explosive bombs that Israel drops on the Gaza Strip decompose and combine with other metals, becoming more dangerous to the environment, humans, and water. in Gaza.
He stressed that all kinds of disasters are expected in Gaza. Due to water and air pollutionThe soil, in addition to those bodies and large quantities of explosive materials that were thrown on Gaza, as a result of it being bombed multiple times in the last twenty years.
The environmental expert stated that the water situation in the Gaza Strip before the war was deteriorating, as about 90% of the water sources were not suitable for drinking, and now the conditions have become even worse as 99% of the water is not suitable for drinking.
Dumping plan
US President Joe Biden commented on reports that Israel began flooding some tunnels in the Gaza Strip with seawater to destroy the tunnel network.
Biden stated, during a press conference, “Although I have heard assurances that there are no hostages currently being held in those tunnels, the administration has not been able to confirm this beyond a reasonable doubt, but I know that every death of a civilian is an absolute tragedy.”
An American official told CNN that the Israelis informed the United States that they had begun conducting careful tests to flood some tunnels in the Gaza Strip with seawater on a limited scale, to see if this would deteriorate the tunnel network on a larger scale.
The official added that the Israelis are still unsure whether this plan will succeed or not, but they have assured the United States that they are keen to test it only in tunnels where they do not believe there are detainees.
On the other hand, the military and strategic expert, Major General Fayez Al-Duwairi, said that the Gaza tunnel network was built on engineering foundations and with a complex design, and pointed out that those who supervised its construction took all considerations and precautions, including the occupation’s attempt to flood it with water, indicating that it is not streamlined and does not apply to it. The theory of rectangular vessels, which are at different depths, and some of which consist of more than one floor.
It is noteworthy that the Wall Street Journal quoted informed American officials that the Israeli army began pumping seawater into the tunnel network of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in Gaza, amid expectations that the process of flooding the tunnels in the Strip will continue for weeks.