You have to hand it to Hamas – if this were a tourist attraction, one couldn't ask for a more enjoyable experience.
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A wild jeep ride to Gaza's beautiful seaside. A meeting with our heroic soldiers who have been destroying the enemy for 120 days already. Descending 20 meters under the ground, walking hunched over, crawling and rolling in the mud, through the winding rooms of an escape burrow.
In the background, explosions, planes, APCs, shooting and smoke grenades, like in a PlayStation game. The goal is the great treasure that Hamas buried and the prize is known in advance. An unambiguous, indisputable connection between the murderous organization and the infamous "aid agency," UNRWA. Is there anything that could top that in terms of extreme sports?
It took me only two minutes touring UNRWA's headquarters in the heart of the upscale Rimal neighborhood to understand that they knew everything. Just like all Tel Avivians saw the digging for the light rail, just like all Jerusalemites heard about the secret tunnel in the capital, so it's impossible that all Gazans, and UNRWA heads in particular, didn't see, didn't know and didn't hear about the tunnel and computer complex that was set up right under their noses. Not near, not approximately, not close by, but literally right beneath them.
I saw with my own eyes the cables connecting UNRWA's communication room on the first floor of the building to Hamas' server room exactly underneath it.
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Did Thomas White, UNRWA Gaza director since the summer of 2021, not notice the trucks removing soil for years from the compound he managed? Did he not wonder who the people walking around his headquarters were when he didn't employ them? Was he not puzzled by the computers, air conditioners, servers, batteries, cement mixers, cables, tiles, steel doors, and even the motorcycles that arrived in his backyard without him ordering them? Did he not notice the fibers that very strangely dangled from his communication room to an unknown destination underground? Did he never once have a doubt that made him think to report to his superiors at the UN?
Video: The dangling cables at the Hamas server room underneath the UNRWA / Credit: Ariel Kahana
You have to be very naive, or probably dishonest, to answer "no" to these questions. What our forces discovered in a sophisticated, joint operation of the best minds and forces left no room for doubt. The UNRWA headquarters above ground and Hamas' "brain" below ground are a physical reality connected by thick cables, and not just as a metaphor.
In our case, after the IDF cleared the Rimal neighborhood two months ago, intelligence that Unit 504 collected from its interrogations taught that there was more to look for. Based on this information and after much thought, our forces brilliantly identified the point in the ground where they penetrated the tunnel.
With impressive cooperation between the 401st Brigade, the IDF Military Intelligence Direcotrate, the Engineering Corps, the Shin Bet security agency, and the 162nd Division – the careful clearing of the tunnel began. For several days our forces advanced meter by meter. They discovered a maze whose deciphering required great ingenuity. They also discovered the luxury conditions that the terrorists had prepared for themselves underground – from a first aid kit for emergencies to motorized scooters that would save them from having to walk bent over for 300 meters there and back, to state-of-the-art Electra air conditioners.
These were intended not only for the people – even in winter it's hot underground – but mainly for Hamas' technological brain, meaning for the server room located, as mentioned, beneath UNRWA's main compound in Gaza.
We were not allowed to see the full room, but even from the little we saw, it's clear this computer system would not embarrass an advanced high-tech company. Columns and columns of servers are cooled by new white air conditioners. Next to it, is a power facility, connected above ground.
"We are at the heart of the secret, in the server farm," Col. Nissim Hazan, who was brought in to command the operation to expose the tunnel, says. "This is the farm from which Hamas created its intelligence superiority. There are ten server cabinets here, full of much-coveted information. You could only get to this place with maneuvering soldiers. You can't do this by remote control or with an aerial bomb. Above us is UNRWA's huge building, which Hamas intentionally located here so we couldn't strike it. This is Hamas' intelligence treasure."
The information in the servers behind it will soon be sucked out. In the meantime, one can only guess that they were used to plan the murderous attack, to collect and concentrate intelligence information ahead of the raid, to remotely control the firing of missiles at Israel over the years, and perhaps also to prepare and build the tunnel array itself. What's certain is the connection to UNRWA is there for everyone to see in broad daylight.
After we again sank into the mud, crawled through the tunnel, walked hunched over for hundreds of meters, and came out into Gaza's trembling skies, the IDF APCs brought us to UNRWA's headquarters. There, among offices, schools, kindergartens, and SpongeBob drawings, the commander of 401st Brigade, Col. Benny Aharon, shows us the agency's own server room.
"We're in UNRWA's server room. Coincidentally – I say this cynically – it's located right above the server room you found underground," he says. "Notice that all the cables are ripped and disconnected, they left almost nothing, only what they managed to cut off. We're lucky a few cables remained that they didn't manage to cut off some of the cables that going down below. They took out all the DVRs and computers from here. Only someone who has something to hide does something like this. What kind of international humanitarian organization that only has good intentions behaves this way?"
Evening is falling and a cool breeze comes from the sea. The APCs head back to the beachfront handoff point. The brand new Netz unit – black coffee is their courtesy – again takes us in the armored vehicles, this time out towards Be'eri. We speedily cross areas our forces destroyed, and on that same route, the Hamas killers raced toward our communities that fateful morning.
The whole way, I couldn't stop thinking, why did they do this? The Hamasniks knew that one day the IDF would arrive. Hence the tangled tunnels, hence the fortified steel doors, hence a whole array of obstacles meant to delay the invasion that would sooner or later come. But if so, if you knew that in the end, Israel would defeat you anyway, why did you do this? What's the logic and benefit of committing crimes against humanity that end in your own destruction?
