Before the ground invasion, military analysts warned of catastrophe.
By Hezy Laing
For years, the Gaza “metro” — the vast underground tunnel network built beneath the Strip — paralyzed Israel’s security establishment.
But during the Iron Swords War, the picture was reversed.
The strategic weapon Hamas believed would defeat Israel became the grave of thousands of its fighters, echoing the Biblical story of the Canaanite kings trapped in the Cave of Makkedah.
For more than fifteen years, Hamas constructed an entire subterranean city beneath Gaza.
The “metro,” as the seemingly endless tunnel system came to be known, was not only a military asset but a psychological one.
In Israeli defense circles and in the public consciousness, it became a symbol of an unsolvable problem — an existential threat that any direct confrontation would cost enormous bloodshed.
The very idea of sending ground forces into the “Gaza quagmire” was dismissed before it was even raised.
After every round of fighting, the perception hardened: the underground monster could not be defeated, only contained.
The Horror Predictions That Failed
Before the ground invasion, military analysts warned of catastrophe.
They predicted hundreds or even thousands of soldiers would fall into ambushes, dragged into hidden shafts and swallowed by the earth.
The dense, booby‑trapped tunnel system — built over a decade and a half at a cost of billions of dollars — was expected to become the IDF’s killing field.
This fear paralyzed commanders and politicians alike and was a major reason Israel delayed decisive action against Hamas for years.
But once the ground maneuver of the Iron Swords War began, reality turned against Hamas’s planners.
Through determination, technological innovation, and the courage of frontline fighters, the “impenetrable fortress” proved to be a mass grave.
Engineering forces from Yahalom, together with infantry and armored units, exposed, mapped, and destroyed thousands of tunnel shafts and hundreds of kilometers of underground routes.
Israeli ingenuity was expressed through robots that scanned tunnels, specialized explosives that collapsed entire sections, and massive water‑flooding operations that turned hiding places into swamps.
The ultimate defensive wall of Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif became a trap that closed upon them.
From the Cave of Makkedah to Gaza’s Underworld
This dramatic reversal — the enemy’s deadliest weapon becoming its downfall — is not new in Jewish history.
It recalls the Book of Joshua, where five Amorite kings fled into the Cave of Makkedah.
What they believed was a refuge became their prison.
Joshua ordered large stones rolled across the entrance, trapping them inside; after Israel’s victory, they were brought out and defeated.
The fortress became a tomb, the shelter a snare.
So too in Gaza: the very system meant to destroy Israel became the burial place of its enemies.
The victory over the “City of Tunnels” is not only a tactical achievement but a profound spiritual message for our generation.
It teaches that no challenge is beyond our strength and that no human declaration of “impossible” can stand against the devotion of Israel’s soldiers.
The next time we hear of a battlefield with “no solution” or a strategic threat that must be “contained,” we will remember this reversal.
“Digs a pit and falls into it” — Proverbs 26:27.
