Report: Israel ‘Racing Against Time’ to Destroy Gaza Terror Tunnels as Phase 2 Withdrawal Looms
“Only half of the Hamas terror tunnels on the Israeli-controlled side of the “Yellow Line” in Gaza have reportedly been destroyed by the IDF so far.”
With President Donald Trump calling for the rolling out of the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire, the Israeli military is ‘racing against the time’ to dismantle Hamas terror tunnels in areas under its control.
After 26 months of counter-terrorist operations since the October 7 massacre, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has succeeded in destroying upto 25% of Hamas’s vast tunnel network hidden beneath homes, schools, hospitals, and other civilian infrastructure, Israeli newspapers reported this week, citing the Hebrew language news website Walla.
Phase two of the Trump ceasefire plan requires further withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza. The IDF currently controls 53% of the terrorist-infested enclave. The terrorist group Hamas, on the other hand, hasn’t fulfilled its part of the deal as it continues to hold the body of the last Israeli hostage and refuses to handover its weapons.
"Based on the fact that Hamas pledged, they swore that they were going to disarm. Now, if they're not going to disarm, those same countries will wipe out Hamas." – President Donald J. Trump 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/mYIBfZzCV0
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) December 29, 2025
“Only half of the Hamas terror tunnels on the Israeli-controlled side of the ‘Yellow Line’ in Gaza have reportedly been destroyed by the IDF so far,” The Times of Israel reported on Thursday, citing Walla. “IDF troops, including combat engineers, are working around the clock on such efforts, including deploying new methods of making the tunnels unusable,” the news outlet added.
Since October 7, 2023, the IDF has repeatedly revised its estimates on the size of Hamas’s underground network in Gaza. Despite previous intelligence, the Israeli military planners have been surprised by the vastness, sophistication, and strategic significance of these terror tunnels, the news report said.
The Jerusalem Post reported on Monday, citing Walla:
The IDF is in a “race against time” to locate and destroy tunnels between the Gaza border fence and the Yellow Line, before diplomatic factors bring operations to a halt, security sources told Walla on Monday.
The army has reinforced engineering units in Gaza and expanded earthworks across the buffer area, the officials said. The effort includes fortifying existing outposts, improving defenses along the Yellow Line and the border fence, demolishing structures above ground, and, most intensively, locating and demolishing tunnels.
A security source said this week, “The scale of the IDF’s engineering equipment, in line with the number of tunnel-search focal points in the Gaza Strip, indicates the huge intelligence gap that preceded the war regarding the entire tunnel world of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.”
The source added, “Military Intelligence did not fully understand how Hamas integrated the different types of tunnels in different areas as a foundation of its combat doctrine on the one hand and a way of life on the other. We did not understand the size of the project and the importance Hamas attributed to the tunnels, and what is happening now is an attempt to close the gap, to locate these tunnels and destroy a massive project of decades.”
Previous reporting by The Jerusalem Post cites IDF officials believing early on in the war that around 75% of the tunnels in Gaza were destroyed, only to later change that estimate to around 25% of terror tunnels.
An engineering official taking part in tunnel-detection missions said, “In recent weeks, there is a feeling that we are working against time, that every hour is precious, as if at any moment we are about to be stopped due to diplomatic processes, and therefore activity in the field is very intensive and precise. We are really trying to concentrate our efforts.”
An IDF source told Walla, “We are operating in several sectors, also along the defensive line, the fence line opposite the communities in Israel. There are places where the distance from the border to the Yellow Line is 11 km into the Gaza Strip, in some places, Khan Yunis and Rafah.”
Another mission, the officer said, is “to locate the trapped enemy in eastern Rafah,” referring to terrorists still in underground tunnels beyond the Yellow Line.
“We are methodically, step by step, destroying the enemy that remains there. In our assessment, there are a few dozen terrorists in Rafah’s Jenina neighborhood. We do not know their condition, whether they are alive or dead, but the actions we are carrying out there will destroy them. We assess that activity there is nearing completion.”
On tunnel-detection, the official said, “We are carrying out engineering operations, some accompanied by explosives, with engineering tools and so on. We are working in a very systematic way. The goal is to destroy all the infrastructure in the area under our control. The order of priorities is clear. First of all, tunnels, including the core mainlines. After that, to organize the area so they can defend it better. And of course, we are now making use of every minute we have while we are still on the Yellow Line, holding and defending such a line, because we do not know what tomorrow will bring. You know, in a second, they can tell us, Phase II has arrived.”
Hamas invested massive resources in building a wide network of terror tunnels underneath the Gaza Strip.
1 terror tunnel = 350 trucks of building supplies = $3M
So far 30 terror tunnels were discovered in Gaza = $90M humanitarian aid money stolen by Hamas. pic.twitter.com/luLGoxXrah
— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) December 22, 2023
Hamas’s underground terror infrastructure, or the so-called ‘Gaza Metro’, is estimated to be at least 450 miles long and reaches a depth of more than 75 meters. This network took approximately two decades to build and came at a cost of over a billion dollars, according to moderate estimates. The tunnel network, not accessible to ordinary Gazans, houses terrorist commander centres, weapons depots, and hellish dungeons for holding hostages.
Tunnels with reinforced blast doors and booby traps serve as staging points for sneak attacks on IDF troops. “Nearly 6,000 access shafts allowed terrorists to move undetected around Gaza in a spider’s web of tunnels that was far more extensive than Israel realised when the war began,” The Sun (UK) reported recently.
Douglas Murray left Piers Morgan SPEECHLESS:
"Hamas could have used the billions of dollars since 2006 to build up Gaza. They built a tunnel network bigger than the London underground. They want the death of their own citizens in order to get world opinion turned against Israel" pic.twitter.com/uDaH7QRwVB
— Vivid.🇮🇱 (@VividProwess) October 5, 2025
The revelation comes as Hamas terrorists continue to use these tunnels to attack Israeli troops posted beyond the Yellow (ceasefire) Lines. On Christmas Day, the IDF disclosed that its “troops eliminated dozens of terrorists who crossed the Yellow Line and posed an immediate threat.”
BREAKING: A large Hamas tunnel has been discovered in Gaza, just 800 meters from the border.
Never forget that Hamas’s tunnels are larger than London’s subway, with rooms stocked with stolen food, electricity, water, and even bathrooms.
And yet, not once in two years of war did… pic.twitter.com/RfQaNJEQJ8
— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) December 30, 2025
Earlier this week, IDF troops discovered a terror tunnel close to the Israeli border after heavy rainfall. “Severe weather in recent days led to the collapse of a large underground cavity several hundred meters from the Gaza border in the northern part of the Gaza Strip,” within the IDF-controlled Yellow Line, Israel’s Ynetnews reported on Monday.
“The tunnel was identified during a scan conducted by soldiers from the Golani Brigade’s 12th Battalion. The troops noticed ground that had collapsed following heavy rainfall and isolated the area, about 800 meters (about 0.5 miles) from the border fence, opposite the central Gaza community of Kissufim,” the news website added.
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Comments
This will end… badly. Predictably.
Jews made Israel bloom out of the desert (literally) while Muslims dug holes in the ground with a single minded purpose – to kill those very Jews.
And just as you cannot change a leopard’s spots, you cannot reform the Muslim that has been steeped in blind hatred since conception.
I admire Mr. Trump for trying to achieve a peaceful solution to this situation – and he’s been largely successful elsewhere in the world – but as it relates to Gaza it’s better to build a wall around the entire place so that no one can get in or out.
Muslims have been at the throats of every other religion, and those with no religion, since they came into being.
Peace will come only when they are beaten into submission, and by any and every means necessary.
Churchill had Islam’s number in 1899. They’ve made zero progress since then.
Great Britain?
Dear God they have surrendered to the muslims
Precisely, nothing short of this will suffice.
Stranger Things in the real world
Evil never rests in the Upside Down world we live in
Israel must confront Trump
They must be let to finish the job
I’m more worried about the progressives in this country and Europe (and Israel) the damage they have done are doing, and will continue to do. The problem of these progressives has been ignored for too long and they have critical mass in my opinion.
Why am I worried about progressives and not Hamas? It is because I believe Israel can do what it needs to do if allowed to do it but the progressives are bound and determined to prevent them and are working very hard towards this goal and the destruction of Israel (not to mention the destruction of western civilization).
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Hamas hasn’t fulfilled its end, so keep working and don’t withdraw. It’s a very basic concept that even the anti-civilization Progressives should understand. “They didn’t do what they said, so deal’s off. Keep blowing stuff up, boys.”
And, remind Trump, if you have to, that he wouldn’t pay a supplier who didn’t deliver as promised. So why should this be any different?
Just toss a persistent nerve gas into the tunnels. Announce you’ve done so to every tunnel you’re aware of. Don’t mark them in any way.
Let Hamas figure out which ones are toxic.
Collapse after a heavy rain fall……. hmmm. Might be onto something there. Water? Flooding, destruction of goods and?, Mold, future inhospitable circumstances? Finish the damn thing.
Agreed. Give two days’ warning then start pumping millions of gallons of seawater into every opening,
Trump seems to assume that because he got lip service from a bunch of other western nations that they were behind his peace accords, that they will pony up when it comes time to take out Hamas for good. I’m afraid he’s going to have a Henny Penny moment in his immediate future that he isn’t going to like.
Israel should be doing whatever their govt believes is in the best interest of their Citizens without much consideration for the opinions of other Nations especially the EU Nations who largely have made the decision to align against them to keep a lid on the rampaging and rioting of the millions of Middle Eastern ‘immigrants/refugees’ their governments imported against the wishes of the ordinary European Citizen.
hurry
b/c even non jews are going to need/want to move to israel as the islam takeover of merica makes quicker progress across merica