In December 2015, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights said that nine death sentences were issued in the Gaza Strip in 2015, while in 2016, four death sentences were handed down to Gazans accused of spying for Israel. He stressed that their arduous efforts deterred Israel and represent a pressure card Hamas can use for the release of Palestinian prisoners.
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Meanwhile, Egypt has helped out Israel in the fight against Hamas by flooding Hamas’s tunnels that it used for both military and commercial purposes.
Hamas has since boasted it has rebuilt its network.
During the offensive, the Israeli army announced that it had destroyed over 30 cross-border tunnels, with some Israeli military officials expressing surprise at the extent of the tunnel-building. “We have dozens, if not a hundred, engineering vehicles on the Gaza border”, Eisenkot said, according the Times of Israel. Israeli security officials have warned that any calm in Gaza will be temporary unless locals are given an incentive to keep the peace.
“The wreckage still reminds everyone of the devastating effects of the last onslaught, from which the strip has yet to recover”, he said.
Egypt is reluctant to be seen in the Arab world as acting against the Palestinians.
The Hamas source added that the expedited project was made possible thanks to a grant from the Iranian government.
Mukhaimar Abu Saada, the professor of political science at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, agrees with the other analysts that the facts on the ground are not suitable for launching a new war on the Gaza Strip.
“Israel doesn’t want to launch a new war, which Hamas is calling a “battle of preparation”, he told Anadolu Agency.
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“Even if Israel is able to uncover a tunnel, or two, or 10, they [the tunnels] run deep under Israel, beyond Gaza, into 1948 territory”. Israelis living near the border have reported hearing tunneling sounds under their homes recently. Other weapons, such as rockets, have proven to be less effective, and Hamas’ dependence on the tunnels is clear from the decline of the arms smuggling activity after the closure of the tunnels between the Gaza Strip and Egypt.
