The IDF’s controlled explosion of a tunnel on Monday is a symbolic act that completes the achievement of one of the most important goals of last summer’s Gaza war – the destruction of some 30 Hamas attack tunnels.

The tunnel, located near the Gaza border in the area of the Karni crossing, some three kilometers from Kibbutz Nahal Oz, was uncovered during the war, but the destruction of the tunnel was controlled and carried out in coordination with local residents. It was a branch of an attack tunnel that started in Gaza’s Shejaiya neighborhood. The tunnel, found to contain old weaponry, was destroyed in order to prevent Hamas from using it again in a future war.

Hamas did indeed suffer damaging blows in the war. The uncovering and destruction of the tunnels was one of the heaviest blows dealt to the organization. The defense establishment speaks of a “deterred Hamas,” but the concept of deterrence is clearly fragile. Therefore, in the IDF it is estimated that it is just a matter of time until the next round of fighting. It could be a matter of months or years.

There is one undisputed point agreed upon in the defense establishment: Hamas is continuing in its efforts to learn lessons from the war and rehabilitate its military capabilities. A week does not go by without reports of the organization carrying out rocket-launching experiments from different sites in the Strip, westward into the sea.

Hamas is still finding it difficult to smuggle weapons into Gaza, especially rockets, because of good Israeli intelligence and because of Egypt’s contribution to weakening the organization.Egypt is demolishing houses between Sinai and the Strip to create a 1,000 meter buffer zone which could potentially be expanded to three kilometers from the border. Cairo sees Hamas as a group which must be combated due to its support of jihadist terror in Sinai.

Read the article in full at the Jerusalem Post.