Under the heart of Gaza City, IDF digs up a vast hive of lairs where Hamas’s elite hid
Beneath once-busy Palestine Square, troops show ToI a tunnel network that includes living quarters and personal shafts — one with an elevator — used by terror chiefs on Oct. 7
Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — A central square in Gaza’s largest city that until October 7 was a humming center of Palestinian retail and commercial activity hid an extensive warren of Hamas tunnels used by the terror group’s top officials to hide from Israel, the military has revealed.
Among those whose homes or offices were linked by the network of subterranean fortifications was Muhammad Deif, the elusive leader of the terror group’s military wing, and Yahya Sinwar, the top Hamas official in Gaza, according to the Israel Defense Forces.
Palestine Square is located in the upscale Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City, an area that before the war was seen as the power center of the enclave’s elite, home to top officials from the terror group ruling the Strip.
“This was a bustling area, there are buildings here of wealthy people,” said the commander of the 401st Armored Brigade, Col. Benny Aharon, while giving a media tour of the area on Tuesday.
“There are other squares in Gaza City, but this is the main one,” he said, pointing to what the IDF has identified as a penthouse apartment where the daughter of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh lived, a community college, Hamas government offices, and a lavish bridal store surrounding what once was a main traffic circle.
The square — not to be confused with a similarly named plaza in Shejaiya where Hamas paraded some released hostages last month — has largely been ripped up by army bulldozers and tanks.
The center of the square now features a massive Israeli flag, along with a giant menorah used during the Hanukkah festival earlier this month. The surrounding buildings are all heavily damaged or destroyed.
Aharon said all of Hamas’s top officials, including Haniyeh, Deif and Sinwar, had either offices or homes near the square, with personal tunnel shafts to the underground network, linking their hideouts, offices, and homes away from Israeli surveillance.
The army believes the shafts were used by the senior Hamas officials to hide deep underground when the terror group launched its murderous terror attack on southern Israel on October 7.
The brutal assault saw thousands of Hamas-led terrorists pour into Israel from the land, air and sea, where they killed more than 1,200 people and seized some 240 hostages, many of whom remain in Gaza.
According to the IDF, the tunnel network featured blast doors and living quarters, adding that in some cases troops operating inside the tunnels found stores of food and water left behind, indicating plans to stay hidden in the underground sites for long periods.
The underground network also allowed the top Hamas members to flee to other areas of the Strip as Israel launched its ground offensive against the terror group.
In a statement Wednesday, the army described the complex as an “underground terror city” with a “strategic tunnel route connected to other significant underground infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.”
The tunnels under Palestine Square, along with other Hamas infrastructure in the adjacent buildings, underline the deep entanglement of the group’s terror activities within the civilian fabric of Gaza.
“Regular homes of civilians, that people seemingly live in the day-to-day, but in reality, they are either a hideout apartment for terrorists, or directly underneath the building, they have meeting rooms, where all of Hamas’s officials met,” Aharon said.
The commander said Hamas’s tunnel network in Gaza, including the sections under Palestine Square is “long, big and branched.”
The existence of Hamas’s vast tunnel network beneath Gaza has long been among the world’s worst-kept secrets, but Israel’s ground incursion has shined a light on just how enormous and durable it is. Earlier this month, the army unveiled a tunnel built dozens of meters below northern Gaza, stretching at least 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) toward the border with Israel at the Erez Crossing, and broad enough to fit a car. A video found by the army showed Sinwar’s brother, Mohammad, a senior Hamas official, cruising through the passageway.
“They built the underground [infrastructure] over decades, which is aimed at protecting themselves, the seniors, not the civilians, not even the soldiers in this case — their terrorists — but their officials,” Aharon said.
Aharon said the tunnels’ electricity for lighting, air circulation, and communications was largely powered by solar panels from nearby buildings, which Hamas siphoned off from local civilians, further taking advantage of the population. The terror group also uses generators, and has power accumulators to be able to stay hidden in the underground passages for long periods, he said.
The Times of Israel and other reporters were shown several tunnels in the area of the square, some just a few meters from the main traffic circle, though were not allowed to photograph some of them due to security concerns and ongoing operations inside of them.
Aharon said, “It’s hard to believe that people who lived here didn’t see trucks and dozens of people digging… they all knew what was happening.”
“We were able to locate many tunnel shafts, which lead to many more shafts, and uncover large tunnel routes, which we know were used by very important people [in Hamas],” said the deputy commander of the Israeli Air Force’s elite Shaldag unit.
The major, who can only be identified by his rank, said around 20 “significant” tunnel shafts were found in the area of Palestine Square.
One of the tunnels, located inside a mixed-use residential and commercial building, was believed to have been used by Deif, the commander of Hamas’s military wing.
The tunnel featured an elevator that goes some 20 meters (65.6 feet) underground, and then a long staircase heading another 20 meters down, before branching off to other areas. According to the major, the tunnel network has multiple levels and various facilities used by senior Hamas members.
“It was very difficult at the start to uncover this tunnel shaft,” he said. “The camouflage was relatively good.”
The major said that intelligence information provided by the Shin Bet, along with evidence found inside the building and tunnel, proved “unequivocally” that it was used by Deif.
A wheelchair was found inside the building adjacent to the tunnel entrance, and another one was found inside the tunnel, thought to have been used by Deif. However, according to a report Tuesday, Deif is in a much better physical shape than previously thought.
Little is known of Deif, but oft-repeated reports in Israel for over a decade have described him as missing both his legs and an arm. He was said to have lost the limbs in airstrikes as Israel repeatedly tried to assassinate him.
The report by the Maariv daily cited video evidence of Deif found recently by troops in the Gaza Strip, showing the arch-terrorist walking, albeit with a slight limp, indicating that the prevalent belief that he is paraplegic and nearly paralyzed is mistaken. Still, indications are that the IDF continues to believe he uses a wheelchair at least some of the time.
Asked by The Times of Israel if the tunnel shaft with an elevator was surprising, the major said his unit had already found several tunnels with elevators, but “there were other elements that surprised us inside the tunnel route.”
In another tunnel in the area, with a spiral staircase leading down 20 meters, the IDF said a large explosive device that had been planted there by Hamas detonated.
Aharon said the army had already known about some of the shafts, but others they discovered on the ground.
“Sometimes the intelligence is just a small fragment, and sometimes it’s a large amount of information. But it’s all step by step, you get information, carry out an operation, and receive more information. But obviously in this area which is an asset [to Hamas] and they want to hide it, the information is limited, but as time goes on, you get more information.”
The entrances to the tunnels and other Hamas infrastructure in the area of Palestine Square, uncovered by the 401st Brigade and other special forces working alongside them — including Shaldag, the Navy’s Shayetet 13, and the Yahalom combat engineering unit — have already provided much-needed intel to the IDF, the army says.
“During the raids on the sites we’ve managed to obtain accurate intelligence, which lead us to many other areas, and we will reach all of them,” the major said.
“We are advancing slowly but safely, persistently destroying them, but not rushing, so we can obtain our main goals of destroying Hamas’s rule and returning the hostages,” he added.
Fighting continues despite operational control
Ceaseless explosions from airstrikes and tank shelling were heard throughout the entire visit to Palestine Square, which was conducted under the tight control of the army. The blasts signaled that despite the operational control the IDF has over the area, troops were still battling smaller Hamas cells.
The media tour to the heart of Gaza City was initially delayed by several hours after troops encountered a Hamas cell on one of the roads the reporters were supposed to drive through. The drive to Palestine Square was also supposed to be in an open-top humvee, but mid-way through the journey the reporters swapped into a heavily armored Namer armored personnel carrier.
“We spotted a lookout on the roof of a building and three terrorists moving between the buildings,” Aharon said after we arrived, adding that a drone strike was carried out against the operative on the roof, and tanks shelled the other three.
In another incident during the visit, troops of the Combat Engineering Corps’ elite Yahalom unit killed three Hamas gunmen in the area, bringing back their weapons and equipment to show the reporters.
During the 401st Brigade’s battles against Hamas over Rimal’s Palestine Square during the past week and a half, some 600 terror operatives were killed by troops and in airstrikes, according to the IDF.
Though their underground lairs are now in the IDF’s hands and their aboveground homes and offices piles of rubble, Hamas’s leaders remain at large, even as pressure builds for Israel to wind down the current phase of the war and shift its offensive into low gear.
Speaking to The Times of Israel from a rooftop overlooking the once-simmering square, Aharon admitted that dismantling Hamas, as Israel has vowed to do following the October 7 massacres, “will take time.”
“I don’t know how long it will take, but every time you reach an area you discover more [Hamas] assets, and we want to destroy them, discover more enemies who we want to kill, and therefore, to defeat an enemy it takes time,” he said. “But relatively, in the time we’ve been here, we’ve achieved a lot.”
As the sun began to set over Gaza City, troops detonated a large cache of weapons and explosives uncovered in a nearby residential building, setting the structure up in flames, and covering Palestine Square in a thick layer of black smoke.
By now, evidence that Gaza’s terrorists hid arms where civilians once tried to live their lives should be far from shocking, but Aharon was still disturbed by the discovery.
“Their cruelty is always surprising,” he said. “A very cruel enemy against [its own people] and us, we saw this on October 7, but it’s surprising every time.”
