How about a moat?

[Loren Pechtel]

How do you figure that? The article you linked does not seem to say that at all:


If there was an Israeli strike in Gaza before June 28th, I'm not aware of it.

It's discussed in the article from the Israel Times, the one you dismissed. The IDF launched an air strike to assassinate someone, and the rockets fired by Hamas were a few hours later.

At least 16 rockets were fired at Israel Monday morning, most of them hitting open areas in the Eshkol region, the army said.

The security sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, assessed that Hamas had probably launched the barrage in revenge for an Israeli airstrike several hours earlier which killed one person and injured three more.

A member of Hamas’s militant wing was killed in the attack, Gaza health official Ashraf al-Kidra said.

While Israel has maintained it holds Hamas responsible for all rocket attacks, officials have said that smaller groups, such as Islamic Jihad, are usually behind the rocket attacks, while Hamas squads generally attempt to thwart the rocket fire.

Hamas hasn’t fired rockets into Israel since Operation Pillar of Defense ended in November 2012,...

If Hamas was serious about preventing rockets they wouldn't mind Israel pounding the competing groups when they launch.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The US has issues with feral cats. Maybe we could ship them over and stuff them in the tunnels.

 

[Underseer]

The terror tunnels from Gaza into Israel are a huge problem, as are tunnels going to Egypt that are used to smuggle things like rockets and explosives. So why not dig a big-ass moat all around Gaza? 50 m (i.e. length of an Olympic swimming pool) wide, about the same deep. Of course the terrorists could go deeper but it would be much more difficult and expensive for them and also the tunnels could be made permanently inoperable by simply blowing up the section under the moat and flooding it.

Why not use a Final Solution and kill all the Palestinians in concentration camps? This action would be completely justified because Palestinians shoot rockets, and also because Palestinians want to drive all the Jews into the sea.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

How do you figure that? The article you linked does not seem to say that at all:

The air force attack on Khan Younis Sunday night came minutes after Palestinians in the coastal enclave fired a volley of rockets at southwestern Israel. The Iron Dome defense system shot down two of the projectiles — Grad rockets — over Netivot. There were no reports of injury or damage in the rocket attack.

Early Sunday morning, air force planes struck 12 sites in Gaza in response to rockets fired over the weekend. Two rockets hit the town of Sderot, close to the border with Gaza, late Saturday, causing a massive fire that destroyed a paint factory.

If there was an Israeli strike in Gaza before June 28th, I'm not aware of it.

Hamas wasn't firing rockets on the 28th, or at any time earlier. The smaller resistance organizations that do not answer to Hamas have been firing year-round since 2012 and Hamas has generally complied with requests to crack down on and prevent that from happening. They began to ease the crackdown at the beginning of the year when Israel tightened the border restrictions, and they lifted the crackdown altogether during the "search for the missing teenagers" sweep of the West Bank.

The 30th, however, is the first time since 2012 that Hamas ITSELF has actually launched anything at Israel.

When a guy with a machinegun opens fire on a crowd of civilians, it makes a pretty big difference if the guy is an Adam Lanza-lunatic or a uniformed marine acting on orders from his CO.

- - - Updated - - -

It's discussed in the article from the Israel Times, the one you dismissed. The IDF launched an air strike to assassinate someone, and the rockets fired by Hamas were a few hours later.

At least 16 rockets were fired at Israel Monday morning, most of them hitting open areas in the Eshkol region, the army said.

The security sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, assessed that Hamas had probably launched the barrage in revenge for an Israeli airstrike several hours earlier which killed one person and injured three more.

A member of Hamas’s militant wing was killed in the attack, Gaza health official Ashraf al-Kidra said.

While Israel has maintained it holds Hamas responsible for all rocket attacks, officials have said that smaller groups, such as Islamic Jihad, are usually behind the rocket attacks, while Hamas squads generally attempt to thwart the rocket fire.

Hamas hasn’t fired rockets into Israel since Operation Pillar of Defense ended in November 2012,...

If Hamas was serious about preventing rockets they wouldn't mind Israel pounding the competing groups when they launch.

The U.S. is serious about preventing gun violence, but I don't think we would be too pleased if the Taliban started suicide bombing the homes of gun owners.

 

[Jayjay]

How do you figure that? The article you linked does not seem to say that at all:

The air force attack on Khan Younis Sunday night came minutes after Palestinians in the coastal enclave fired a volley of rockets at southwestern Israel. The Iron Dome defense system shot down two of the projectiles — Grad rockets — over Netivot. There were no reports of injury or damage in the rocket attack.

Early Sunday morning, air force planes struck 12 sites in Gaza in response to rockets fired over the weekend. Two rockets hit the town of Sderot, close to the border with Gaza, late Saturday, causing a massive fire that destroyed a paint factory.

If there was an Israeli strike in Gaza before June 28th, I'm not aware of it.

It's discussed in the article from the Israel Times, the one you dismissed. The IDF launched an air strike to assassinate someone, and the rockets fired by Hamas were a few hours later.

At least 16 rockets were fired at Israel Monday morning, most of them hitting open areas in the Eshkol region, the army said.

The security sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, assessed that Hamas had probably launched the barrage in revenge for an Israeli airstrike several hours earlier which killed one person and injured three more.

A member of Hamas’s militant wing was killed in the attack, Gaza health official Ashraf al-Kidra said.

While Israel has maintained it holds Hamas responsible for all rocket attacks, officials have said that smaller groups, such as Islamic Jihad, are usually behind the rocket attacks, while Hamas squads generally attempt to thwart the rocket fire.

Hamas hasn’t fired rockets into Israel since Operation Pillar of Defense ended in November 2012,...

Emphasis added. The assasination described above occured on Monday June 30th. Hamas was firing rockets on Saturday June 28th (according to the same article which I quoted), and as far as I can tell, there were no Israeli strikes on Gaza prior to that.

 

[Jayjay]

How do you figure that? The article you linked does not seem to say that at all:


If there was an Israeli strike in Gaza before June 28th, I'm not aware of it.

Hamas wasn't firing rockets on the 28th, or at any time earlier. The smaller resistance organizations that do not answer to Hamas have been firing year-round since 2012 and Hamas has generally complied with requests to crack down on and prevent that from happening. They began to ease the crackdown at the beginning of the year when Israel tightened the border restrictions, and they lifted the crackdown altogether during the "search for the missing teenagers" sweep of the West Bank.

The 30th, however, is the first time since 2012 that Hamas ITSELF has actually launched anything at Israel.

So how do we know that the rockets fired on June 28th which caused a factory fire in Sderot were not fired by Hamas, and even if that were the case, why shouldn't Hamas be held responsible anyway if they deliberately lifted the crackdown on other organizations?

 

[Rhea]

Which leads to the next avenue. If detonating the bottom of the moat to drown a tunnel would work, why not just drown or grout the existing tunnels? Certainly, it'd cost a lot to grout them, but honestly, it'd have to be less than a military operation.

Grout? It would be trivial to remove it?
Flood it with what? A fire hose? The beauty of the moat is that the water is right there, above the tunnels and that it automatically floods them to the sea level and attempts to pump it out would be futile.

What causes you to assume the tunnels are below sea level?

 

[Derec]

What causes you to assume the tunnels are below sea level?

They'd have to dig below the moat to remain a tunnel and thus undetectable. The main point of the moat would be to force the tunnel diggers to go much deeper which would make the tunnels much more difficult, costly and time-consuming.

Unfortunately as Loren pointed out the elevation is such that would make the idea unfeasible. You'd have to have a pretty tall canyon between the water line and the normal ground level.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Grout? It would be trivial to remove it?
Flood it with what? A fire hose? The beauty of the moat is that the water is right there, above the tunnels and that it automatically floods them to the sea level and attempts to pump it out would be futile.

What causes you to assume the tunnels are below sea level?

They would have to be below sea level where they went under the moat.

If the ground were flatter it might be a useful idea.