Israel has tried several times to destroy Gaza tunnels in recent years by blowing them up or using bulldozers, but Hamas has always managed to rebuild them.
The United Nations Human Rights Office has warned of serious human rights implications because of Israel’s decision to flood tunnels in Gaza with salt water.
“Israel’s flooding of tunnels with saltwater could have severe adverse human rights impacts, some long term,” the office said in a post on X.
“Goods indispensable to civilian survival could also be at risk, as well as widespread, long-term, and severe environmental damage,” it stressed. Adding that “civilians must be protected.”
Israel's plans to flood the resistance's tunnels in the Gaza Strip with seawater are part of its "psychological warfare" tactics and are unrealistic, retired Jordanian Colonel and military expert, Mohamed Al-Muqabla, has said. https://t.co/IDHpXE1oNr
— Middle East Monitor (@MiddleEastMnt) December 7, 2023
On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Israeli army has begun pumping seawater into the tunnel complex used by resistance fighters. It cited unnamed US officials, adding that the process would likely take weeks.
Dmitry Polianskiy, the First Deputy Permanent Representative of Russia to the UN, has also reportedly warned that flooding the underground of Gaza with seawater “will be a war crime.”
A war crime because it would pollute an already highly salinized underground water in Gaza, as well as irreversibly damage the environment.
Palestinian writer and analyst Ramzy Baroud said that “flooding some of the tunnels is in itself, as cruel as it is, an act of desperation, simply because it is based on the erroneous understanding that the tunnel networks are connected in such a way that flooding one tunnel in Beit Layha, in the north, would somehow flood another in Rafah, in the south.”
The Wall Street Journal reported that Israel has begun the process of flooding the tunnels of Gaza. But will it work? https://t.co/V3mGajCTed pic.twitter.com/Lud4lamOHx
— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) December 12, 2023
Israel has tried several times to destroy Gaza tunnels in recent years by blowing them up or using bulldozers. However, the Palestinian Resistance Movement Hamas has always managed to rebuild them.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 18,787 Palestinians have been killed and more than 50,897 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7. Palestinian and international estimates say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
Those tunnels were built for war against Israel. If Hamas didn’t dig them, there would be no problem. So why does the UN try to blame Israel for problems caused by flooding them, if that is the only way they can eliminate them? Why doesn’t the UN condemn Hamas for digging them in the first place? This makes no sense at all.
Instead of blaming the victim, why not blame the Americans and other Europeans who support the genocide?
The Israeli right hand doesn’t know what the Israeli left hand is doing and vice versa. Ben Gvir wants to build settlements in Gaza again, and the IDF wants to make the Gaza watertable so saline it can’t be planted. Which means they would need to import water either from Egypt or the West Bank. Clearly they have geniuses of the calibre of His Serene Grace Donald J Trump Duke of Dorkshit and Earl of Slurry, US Federal Secretary of Silly Tweets, Tweetabator Extraordinaire, etc.
One more detail to add to their ever-increasing bill.