Solving the ‘Metro’ complex

By Mordechai Ben-Menachem   11-03-2024
(Prepared for Israel News Talk Radio (oral presentation) and Israpundit (written presentation)

As is well known, the Gaza Strip is riddled with a vast complex of underground facilities, tunnels, bunkers, command centres and more. Many, if not most of these are interconnected as a complex network; some have rail lines, electricity and sewage facilities. The network consists of between 500 – 800 kilometres of tunnels, with thousands of peers (access points) from within virtually every United Nations / UNWRA facility, schools, clinics, kindergartens and in some areas, virtually every home.

This is unique in human history and never before has there been a need for a military solution to the issues involved. Destroying the vast, interconnected, multi-city, tunnel network using military- grade or commercial ‘standard’ explosives is highly impractical, very costly and dangerous both for troops conducting such an operation and for ‘civilian’ populations that may reside in the areas afterwards.

What is more, the solution needs to be smarter than simply blowing them up; it needs to be based on long-term thinking and not “now-ism” – rats can and will simply re-dig an exploded tunnel.

Who am I?
I be almost ‘uniquely qualified’ to make these statements. I was a warrior who fought for a year in Gaza, 54 years ago, as an army sapper – I know Gaza and I know about exploding things. Been there and done that; a lot!

For most of my professional life, I worked in the area of software and systems engineering, in weapons and armaments design. For the latter part of my career, I worked in the area of “alternate energy” specializing in utilization of “biomass” for energy. At the end of my academic career, I was a world expert in manure and biomass (to use ‘polite’ language), of all sources.

Two additional important facts:

A. Some thirty years ago, after the Oslo Debacle gave the Holy Jewish City of Hebron to Yasser Arafat and his criminal network, one of his first decisions to be implemented was to declare sewage a bio-weapon to be used to kill Jews and to destroy the Jewish presence. Hence Hebron City sewage was pumped into the Beer Sheva River to attempt to poison the residents of the City of Beer Sheva, a city of about a quarter million residents (then). The intention was to either poison those who lived or force all residents to abandon the city – this intention was verified to me personally by a close associate of Arafat, Prof Marwan Awartany, of Beer Zeit University, in 2000.

B. Some years ago, long before the Abraham Accords were a distant dream, around the beginning of America’s Obama Adventure, I was approached by a representative of the city of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia with a problem that desperately needed solving. The problem, as presented at the time was the following:

The city of Jeddah is a large, modern city with all modern amenities, including of course, a ‘normal’ residential sewage system. The city resides in a mountainous area. The sewage system was designed with a reservoir in the mountains where the sewage is contained, aerated, and subsequently disposed of. All workers at the sewage plant are foreign as Muslims are prohibited by Islam to work with human sewage, all such contact is religiously HARAM – which also matches Arafat’s reported theory.

Unfortunately, when the system was built, the contractor was a little less than honest in his work and the damns containing the reservoir have noncompliant concreate. They contain significant cracks and are on the verge of collapse. If indeed, the entire reservoir does collapse and sewage inundates the city, this would make the entire city and its environs permanently uninhabitable, per Islamic law.

I was offered an obscene amount of money to solve the problem. I declined the project and have no knowledge of its current state.

Four possible solutions to the Gaza Metro

No. One – simplest
Israel has vast reserve supplies of undersea natural gas that can be immediately utilized. Simply put, pump Natural Gas into a tunnel, strike a spark and the tunnel will be destroyed, like a cheap Hollywood film.

A relatively Inexpensive, but still costly solution; but more so than that, it may be borderline illegal under international laws of war as this could be construed a use of poison gas – it is not, but we know from experience that Jews can be blamed for actions that no one would consider blameworthy for anyone else.

This might be a practical solution for certain tunnels, but unlikely viable for entire networks.

No. Two – flour
It is a well-known characteristic of flour (ground wheat) that when pumped into an enclosed space, large quantities tend to suspend in the
air for quite some time before settling. It is also well known that such flour can be ignited and will burn very quickly and explosively. This characteristic has been known for over a thousand years.

Dispersal can be simply implemented with large fans; A very practical solution, particularly for tunnels that are relatively close to the surface, i.e., not deep. However, there may be some individuals that object to wastage of food supplies. One might wish to search for wheat supplies that have been made less useful for human consumption, for instance, vermin contaminated. Can other materials be used? Coal dust appears to be viable, however coal is heavier than wheat dust, hence tunnel-dispersal may be more difficult to achieve. Other kinds of biomass may be viable, of animal waste, cow manure seems closest, if it can be sufficiently dried and ground. Chicken dung dust is not recommended as the high ammonia content may open issues of war-crimes accusations. All animal waste bases appear to present logistical challenges.

No. Three – thermobaric explosion
It is well known that petrol (gasoline) can be rendered into micro-droplets and dispersed in air. This has been done outdoors and in large enclosed spaces; but a tunnel configuration may present dispersal challenges unless the droplets are quite small.

Droplets tend to air-suspend for a relatively long time before grounding. While suspended, the petrol is ignited, causing a massive explosion which also sucks oxygen from the air around the fireball, thus asphyxiating persons quite far from the centre, including outlying tunnels that have not yet been explored.

The tunnel in which it is deployed would be destroyed and connecting tunnels (networked) would be affected, as well.
Issue: it is not known if large-scale thermobaric explosions have been attempted in tunnels. Dispersal may be a challenge.
No. Four – sewage utilization This solution refers directly to the aforementioned issues of sewage.

It is known that the IDF has been using (in some cases) large pumps to introduce water into the tunnels to flush out the vermin. This proposes to replace the water with raw sewage, probably sourced from Ashqelon.

The effect would be dramatic. While the physical tunnel infrastructure would remain intact, they would be completely and permanently unusable by anyone believing in Islamic Law (Sharia). At the same time, Jews are not affected by this, and in fact, once the annoying odour evaporates, the long-term other effect would be fertilising the ground.

Conclusions
This report is a preliminary draft, not an engineering document. For a full engineering specification there would need to be additional work invested.

In the meantime, the American expletive, “Holy Shit” seems would have its first practical application.