The Jerusalem Post reports that senior defense officials fear that Hamas is preparing to build
mega-tunnels along the Philadelphi Corridor in order to smuggle long-range rockets into the Gaza Strip in one piece:
"Hamas is working on obtaining new advanced weaponry and extending the range of its rockets... In order to get this weaponry into Gaza, it will need larger tunnels than it currently has."
Digging a smuggling tunnel is considered a complicated and sometimes dangerous operation that can take several months... The tunnels along the corridor vary in size, but some are believed to be large enough for a person to stand inside.
According to Military Intelligence, the long-range Katyusha rockets Hamas fired into Ashdod and Beersheba during the recent operation were... manufactured in Iran in a number of pieces, enabling their fairly easy transfer to Gaza.
Other rockets that Hamas would like to get its hands on include the long-range Iranian-made Fajr, which has a range of 70 km. and could reach as far as the outskirts of Tel Aviv. Unlike the Grad-model Katyusha, which is 2 meters long, the Fajr is close to 10 m. and is not easy to assemble if smuggled into Gaza in components.
Some of the reports on the alleged Israeli air strike against a weapons convoy in Sudan and bound for Gaza have claimed that the trucks were carrying Fajr missiles, a weapon that could alter the strategic balance of power between Israel and Hamas.
Last week, Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) chief Yuval Diskin told the cabinet that since the three-week military operation ended on January 18, Hamas had smuggled 22 tons of explosives, 45 tons of raw materials for producing bombs, dozens of rockets, hundreds of mortar shells and dozens of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles into Gaza.
Defense officials called on Egypt to increase its efforts to stop the smuggling along the Philadelphi Corridor.
"It really all depends on the Egyptians in the end, since they are deployed along the border and, if they want, can stop the smuggling," one official said.
Well, that says it all. The Egyptians can stop the smuggling, if they want. However, they have let the smuggling go on for years. So, it's obvious that they don't want to stop it. Don't expect them to change their ways any time soon. Does anyone have a Plan B, other than the obvious course of Israel retaking the Gaza border with Egypt? I didn't think so.
