At this point in the Gaza Strip conflict, one thing is certain: Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli army officers, especially mid-level commanders, are in dire need of extensive media coverage that will both endorse and justify their actions, allowing the military machine to keep roaring. Perhaps this explains why the story of the alleged tunnels connecting the Gaza Strip and the Egyptian Sinai was brought to light. The Israeli narrative and media have insisted that these tunnels are the lifeblood that has kept Hamas members afloat throughout the eight months of war.
The reasonable counter-question is whether Israel requires any excuses or justifications to continue the war, given that it appears to be moving forward with its disastrous plans for the Gaza Strip, unconcerned with the reaction of anyone—the international community, its strategic allies, or even its regional neighbors.
The answer is that, yes, Israel does, in fact, require pretexts continuously so long as it is at war. In order to continue this war, it constantly employs dozens of small or detailed pretexts to justify specific movements and actions. However, this is not unique to Israel; propaganda of this kind is used in all wars and can be grounded in truth, a half-truth, or even a past truth, as in the case of the Gaza-Sinai Tunnels. Countless other conflicts make extensive use of this strategy. The current conflict between Russia and Ukraine is an example, as it is rife with justifications advanced by both parties. Aside from the Ukraine war, countless examples abound in history, but one of the most well-known is undoubtedly World War II, in which the conflict went on for seven years, with both sides hiding behind a web of excuses and fabrications, leading up to the ultimate use of the atomic bomb.
At a time when everyone thought a deal was ready to be signed to defuse or at least delay the Battle of Rafah for an undetermined time, Netanyahu did not find that Egypt’s mediating a truce agreement and an exchange of prisoners and Israel’s forced submission to numerous pressures at home and abroad would serve his interests. In this phase, the Israeli prime minister had no choice but to turn Egypt from a trustworthy mediator who enjoys the backing of all parties involved in the mediation process into an enemy with whom Israel had some short-term disagreements and problems that could be resolved later.
The initial step in the Israeli plan involved the Israeli forces taking control of the Rafah Crossing from the Palestinian side. This action is likely to provoke Egyptian anger. Subsequently, the plan called for the fabrication of disputes in response to leaked information in US media regarding Egypt’s alleged tampering with mediation documents exchanged between the Hamas and Israel delegations.
These sensational press stories, which were easily discredited, ultimately failed; Egypt’s mediation was conducted with the necessary seriousness and precision for such endeavors. However, the Israeli mid-level commanders had specific field targets that they needed to reach in order to advance towards the border strip adjacent to the Egyptian border inside the Gaza Strip (known as the Philadelphi Corridor). In order to gain leverage in negotiations, they decided to use the time saved from these disputes to propagate further falsehoods until the Israeli forces achieves a highly strategic position, which would enable them to re-engage in negotiations from a position of strength within the limits they had established on the ground.
In the early months of the Israeli war, Tel Aviv maintained its position that Iran was the primary backer of the Hamas movement. A series of events occurred along this trajectory, culminating in the Iranian assault on Israel and the subsequent Israeli retaliation. It is evident that the United States intervened between the two parties to regulate the pace of both Iranian action and the Israeli response. Apparently, this intervention went further, as Israel has significantly backed down from its accusations that Iran supplied Hamas with the weaponry and missiles it employs to repel the Israeli army.
Hence, it is not difficult to see Tel Aviv’s abandonment of this months-long narrative and its substitution with Sinai serving as the primary “operator” of the Hamas movement via tunnels that, according to some official and unofficial allegations, operate under the watch of Egypt. Worse yet, certain imprudent Israeli claims speculated that Hamas military wing leaders used those tunnels to escape the Gaza Strip and hide in Egypt, possibly with Israeli hostages.
The recent announcement regarding the discovery of 20 tunnel openings inside Gaza, close to the border with Egypt, ties up all the loose ends in the Israeli narrative that needs to be sold to the Israeli interior, which is ready to absorb any information about a military triumph. But this puts the Israeli interior in the middle of a riveting narrative that reveals, in particular, the Israeli army’s inability to reach Hamas leaders and the hostages held by Hamas and to placate the international parties that are sick of the ongoing war and are pressing for stopping the war machine.
These tunnel openings, of which not a single full photo has been or will be taken, are definitely the remains of the tunnels that the Egyptian government destroyed inside Egyptian territory from 2014 to 2020. In 2020, the entire area was cleansed and an advanced buffer zone was constructed using cutting-edge security and construction technologies, both above and below ground. The area remains monitored round-the-clock.
The Israeli side is fully aware of this; Egypt did not carry this out covertly. Its transformation of the border region was, in fact, one of the most significant chapters in its war on terrorism; without it, it could not have won and cleansed Sinai. This extensive undertaking is officially documented in the records of the Egyptian government, with a total expenditure of EGP 3.2 billion. This amount includes the compensation provided to the residents of the affected areas, who had to be relocated within Sinai.
