Gatestone Institute, by Khaled Abu Toameh. Read on here.
Egypt began this week flooding smuggling tunnels along their border with the Gaza Strip with water from the Mediterranean Sea -- a move being condemned by Hamas and other Palestinian factions as a "disturbing nightmare."
The Egyptian army's move is another sign of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's determination to destroy the tunnels that were used to smuggle weapons, people and merchandise from Sinai to the Gaza Strip and the other way around.
This act is also a sign of Sisi's resolve to pursue his military campaign against Islamist terror groups that are waging war against the Egyptian authorities in Sinai. The Egyptians are convinced that Hamas and other Palestinian groups have been providing aid to the terror groups in Sinai.
Since the beginning of the year, dozens of Egyptian soldiers and police officers have been killed in a spate of terror attacks launched by Islamist groups in Sinai.
Earlier this week, Egypt's Interior Ministry announced that terrorists shot dead an Egyptian general in Sinai. In another similar shooting a few days earlier, a terror group killed General Khaled Kamel Osman.
The decision to pump water into the smuggling tunnels is seen as a severe blow not only to the terror groups in Sinai, but also to Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian factions inside the Gaza Strip.
Seawater covers parts of the ground where Egypt has been pumping water into smuggling tunnels along the border with Gaza. (Image source: Al Jazeera video screenshot)Judging from the reaction of the Palestinian groups, it is clear that they are in a state of hysteria as they see their tunnels collapsing one after the other.
In a statement published in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian groups, including Hamas, denounced the flooding of the tunnels as a "disturbing nightmare" for the Palestinians. The factions appealed to the Egyptian authorities to "stop this despicable crime against the Palestinian people and their environment."
"The Palestinian people are surprised by the Egyptian move, which will tighten the blockade on the Gaza Strip, destroy vast areas of agricultural land and harm those living near the border (with Egypt)," the statement said.
Initially, Hamas leaders did not take the reports about flooding the tunnels seriously. Some Hamas leaders, in fact, first thought that these were rumors designed to scare them and other Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip.
But when Hamas leaders woke up on September 13 to discover that the Egyptians had begun pumping water into the smuggling tunnels, they could not believe what they were seeing.
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri announced that his movement asked the Egyptians to stop flooding the tunnels with seawater. "We hope that the Egyptians will comply with our demand," Abu Zuhri said. "This measure is completely unacceptable and poses a threat to many families living alongside the border."
Sources in the Gaza Strip noted this week that the Egyptian move has thus far proven to be effective and successful. They said that since being flooded with water, several tunnels have collapsed.
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