panorama.s2014e34.the.war.of.the.tunnels
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00:00This summer, Palestinians in Gaza were pounded by Israeli bombs.
00:07More than 2,000 people died, a quarter of them children.
00:12I feel so angry. This is a lot of crime.
00:17We find out what it's been like for Israelis living under a barrage of Hamas rockets from Gaza.
00:26Nobody can live with this situation. Nobody.
00:30This war's fueled anger, not only in Gaza, but around the world.
00:35We investigate how and why battles were fought in tunnels deep underground.
00:43Those tunnels, their whole purpose is just to kidnap and to murder Israelis.
00:50Peace talks are due to begin, but what has either side achieved in this war of the tunnels?
00:57Asma Al Ghul is going to her old family home for the first time since it was bombed by the Israelis.
01:23She hasn't dared to come here till now. It's August, the fighting's still going on.
01:29There's a ceasefire today, but the area's a Hamas stronghold, and Asma fears it could be hit again any time.
01:38It's my home.
01:42The bedroom where my mum and our sister and brother always used to stay.
01:53This relative survived, but nine other members of Asma's extended family died when her uncle's house was bombed.
02:01My mum's brother.
02:05How old was the youngest child who died?
02:1120 days.
02:1320 days, just three weeks old?
02:16Twins.
02:19One of the twins died. The other survived but is injured.
02:24This home, I know everything. All my memories. I was seven.
02:34Parts of Gaza have been devastated. More than 100,000 are homeless.
02:40It's the fourth war here in less than a decade, and the bloodiest yet.
02:48For weeks, bombs pounded Gaza, and rockets roared from here over the border into Israel.
02:55It seemed like a showdown between Hamas and the Israeli army.
02:59What were both sides trying to achieve, and why was the cost in civilian lives lost overwhelmingly here in Gaza so high?
03:14Israel was trying to protect its communities here in the south, which have always borne the brunt of Hamas attacks.
03:22I headed to a hill near the town of Sderot, overlooking Gaza.
03:26A ceasefire was supposed to be in force, but it wasn't long before we found out what living under fire is like.
03:42We just heard a mortar come whistling literally overhead and landed just a few hundred metres to our right here in the Israeli village over there.
03:49So we're getting out of here now.
03:55In the car, we heard a rocket had also just hit Sderot.
03:59Well, hang on a minute. Should we take cover?
04:02The rocket hit a house when the family were out.
04:07The physical damage may not look that great, but there's a psychological impact.
04:13Thousands of rockets have hit Sderot over the years. Three people here have died.
04:19You see what they try to do to us? To kill people, innocent. That's what they try to do.
04:24Nobody can live with this situation. Nobody. In all the world.
04:30In a bomb shelter, I found four children from the house, taken there by the babysitter before the rocket attack.
04:38Many Israeli children have had to spend the summer in shelters.
04:43A neighbour whose own home had been hit a couple of days before blamed Hamas and his own Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu.
05:14Sderot's had to put up with Hamas' fire for years.
05:17But the Israeli government wasn't prepared to stand by when major cities and more than a million people were threatened.
05:26Just 27 miles long, the Gaza Strip is home to 1.8 million Palestinians.
05:33It was occupied by Israel until 2005.
05:40I was in Gaza two years later when Hamas took charge, ousting the more moderate Palestinian Authority government.
05:51Hamas is considered a terrorist organisation by Britain, America and Europe.
05:57The militant Islamist group has sworn to destroy Israel.
06:05When Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza, Hamas dug tunnels into Egypt
06:10to smuggle in everything from household goods to weapons.
06:14Last year, when a new Egyptian government destroyed those tunnels,
06:18Hamas lost its economic lifeline, seriously affecting its ability to govern.
06:25By the start of this year, Hamas couldn't pay the salaries of its public workers
06:30and the people of Gaza, there were hard choices to be made.
06:35Hamas was preparing for a showdown with Israel, to ease the blockade they claimed was strangling Gaza.
06:45The trigger was pulled, not in Gaza, but on the occupied West Bank near Hebron in June.
06:53A cell targeted three Israeli teenagers, hitching home from boarding school into Israel.
07:00One of them was 16-year-old Naftali Frenkel.
07:03Somebody stopped, apparently Israeli, with an Israeli licence and a, you know, wearing Jewish garb.
07:11The boys got into the car, but quickly realised they were in trouble.
07:15One of them made a phone call to the police. It was recorded.
07:21HE SPEAKS ARABIC
07:28Then there was the sound of muffled gunshots.
07:39After the shots, the silence was very, very scary.
07:43It's every parent's nightmare, their child shouldn't get home from school.
07:54Israel cracked down, destroying the homes of the suspected kidnappers.
07:59They arrested hundreds of members of Hamas.
08:02After 18 days, the bodies of the teenagers were found.
08:06In an interview with Panorama, the leader of Hamas took responsibility
08:11for the killings.
08:16Hamas hasn't avoided responsibility for this event.
08:19Hamas cells did it, but in the context of self-defence
08:23against Israeli occupation and settlement policy.
08:30Two weeks later, another boy, Palestinian Mohammed Abu Qadir,
08:34was the victim of a tit-for-tat murder.
08:37His father described how Mohammed was seized
08:40from outside this shop in East Jerusalem.
08:50The man who abducted Mohammed was an Israeli
08:53with a history of mental illness.
08:55He was helped by two youths.
08:58Killing him was the worst crime in history.
09:01They poured petrol in his mouth, on his body.
09:06He was still alive when they set fire to him and ran away.
09:11With tensions boiling over, Hamas fired a barrage of rockets into Israel
09:16and Israeli jets bombed Gaza.
09:19By the beginning of July, it was all-out war.
09:25Hamas has launched rockets from built-up areas of Gaza,
09:29as their own video shows.
09:31They've hidden the identity of this fighter
09:34as he positions a handcart on this street.
09:41But the crude rockets are no match for Israel's Iron Dome.
09:45This half-billion-dollar anti-missile system
09:48has destroyed nearly 90% of the thousands of Hamas rockets
09:52which have targeted Israel.
09:55In this asymmetric war, Hamas deployed a weapon
09:59they too had spent years developing.
10:02An even more complex network of tunnels,
10:05these ones built under the border into Israel.
10:14Everybody knows that necessity is the mother of invention.
10:18These tunnels were dug by the resistance in self-defence
10:23against a superior technological and military power.
10:29The Israelis had tried to keep tabs on the tunnel network as it grew,
10:33according to a government minister and former spy chief.
10:37Hamas has built an underground Gaza.
10:42And that's a famous tactic,
10:45in order to use it as a weapon, a terroristic weapon,
10:50against civilians, against soldiers.
10:55Hamas filmed themselves during this war,
10:58launching an attack through a tunnel on the Israeli village of Nahal Oz.
11:02Their mission was to seize a soldier.
11:05They failed, but killed five before fleeing back to Gaza.
11:11Kidnaps proved a powerful weapon for Hamas.
11:15Eight years ago, they seized one Israeli soldier
11:19and ransomed him for a thousand of their prisoners.
11:24We capture Israeli soldiers on the battlefield, not civilians.
11:27We capture them to release our 7,000 prisoners.
11:30When Israel frees our prisoners,
11:32we'll no longer need to capture their soldiers.
11:37During this war, the Israelis discovered
11:40just how extensive the Hamas tunnel network was,
11:43running up to two miles from Gaza into southern Israel.
11:48It's pretty deep, isn't it?
11:50This one is 40 metres deep.
11:53An Israeli commander took me into one of Hamas' attack tunnels,
11:57which emerges between two Israeli villages.
12:02So, you see, it's well designed, so it works very well.
12:06The tunnels are lined with cement, a precious commodity in Gaza,
12:10which Israel has tried to restrict with its blockade.
12:14The Hamas used tens of millions of dollars,
12:19thousands of tonnes of cement to build those tunnels.
12:26As the war went on, the Israelis discovered
12:29what a huge investment of time and money
12:32Hamas had made in these tunnels, dug by hand.
12:37Why didn't you know about these tunnels before?
12:39We were aware of those tunnels, but it's very complicated
12:42and it's not enough to find it in Israel,
12:46because you have to destroy it all the way into Gaza.
12:53And that's just what Israel did.
13:04On July 17th, the Israelis launched a ground offensive
13:08that would destroy more than 30 tunnels inside Gaza.
13:13It was a massive attack.
13:20Deep underground, these special forces were the first Israelis
13:24to probe the tunnels.
13:26They used robots to scout the extensive network
13:29to find and disable explosive devices.
13:33We can't identify these combat engineers,
13:36who have never spoken publicly before.
13:39We've encountered the enemy in the tunnels several times.
13:42And what happened? There was a fight?
13:46Like you would assume.
13:48Our unit lost one soldier and several injuries.
13:53All that stuff, when you lose a soldier, a friend.
13:59The Israeli unit lost that soldier here in Shujaa,
14:02scene of one of the most intensive battles of the war.
14:07This built-up area in eastern Gaza
14:10was the starting point for a series of tunnels.
14:13Hamas used them to try and seize Israeli soldiers.
14:18We found sedatives and binding material.
14:21I personally witnessed Hamas trying to kidnap soldiers,
14:24trying to separate one guy out of the team to pull him away.
14:29The entrance to the tunnel was just 100m from this building,
14:33the Wafa Hospital.
14:35It was hit a week earlier by Israeli shelling.
14:38Staff and patients then evacuated the hospital,
14:41following a warning from the Israelis.
14:44The building then became a flashpoint in the battle.
14:48When we go to the tunnel to deal with it,
14:51we took heavy fire from the hospital.
14:54From inside the hospital? Are you sure about that?
14:57Yeah, I'm sure about it.
14:59They continued to fire at us from the hospital.
15:02The Israelis say their army video shows flashes of fire,
15:06Hamas attacking them from inside the Wafa Hospital.
15:10We had to bomb the hospital
15:13because it was a standing post of Hamas.
15:17The Israelis also claim secondary explosions
15:20prove weaponry was being stored at the Wafa Hospital.
15:25This is a lie.
15:27Israel accuses Hamas of doing this but has no evidence whatsoever.
15:33Today, much of Shejaya is a wasteland.
15:38They're still searching for bodies.
15:44This pile of rubble is all that's left of the Wafa Hospital.
15:49It will cost millions to rebuild it.
15:53In the battle, many houses around the hospital were destroyed,
15:57thousands made homeless.
16:02I left because the Wafa area was being shelled and bombed from the east.
16:08I was afraid for my family, my sons, my grandchildren.
16:15Where's our street? Our house?
16:1825, 30 people are living in it. It's a catastrophe.
16:23200 people, some of them civilians, died in the battle in Shejaya.
16:29The question is, did Israel target them
16:32or was Hamas using them as human shields?
16:37You have to ask this question to Hamas.
16:40Why are they using civilian spots, schools, hospitals,
16:46as their military headquarters?
16:49You have no choice if you are in this round of war,
16:53hostility, and rockets are launched from these places.
16:58The resistance were trained to defend their people,
17:01not to use their people as human shields.
17:04Israel is seeking excuses to strike hospitals.
17:11The next chapter in the war of the tunnels was here in Rafah,
17:15in this moonscape of destruction.
17:18When Hamas tried to abduct another Israeli soldier,
17:21this place became the focus of the so-called Hannibal Directive,
17:25an order to bring back soldiers dead or alive.
17:30You are using all the means on the ground
17:33and sometimes you are also asking for an outside backup
17:37in order to chase those who kidnapped the soldiers.
17:42On August 1st, there was a humanitarian ceasefire.
17:46Under its terms, this Israeli unit was continuing their mission in Rafah.
17:51Hamas killed two of them and dragged a third,
17:55Lieutenant Hadar Goldin, into a tunnel.
18:00One of his comrades, Lieutenant Eitan,
18:03told me how he carried out the Hannibal Directive.
18:06I decide to go inside the tunnel,
18:09so I take with me a group of soldiers and we go down to the tunnel.
18:14To look for Hadar.
18:17And we saw a path of blood, so we knew Hadar was dragged inside.
18:22We continued about 500, 800 metres.
18:26What was it like in the tunnels?
18:29Very deep and dark.
18:31Very small.
18:33Getting claustrophobic.
18:35The tunnel was booby-trapped with explosives.
18:39We have to go find him. We have to get him, no matter what the cost is.
18:44But the Hannibal Directive didn't save Hadar Goldin.
18:48He was declared dead the next day.
18:51Hamas has still not returned his body.
18:57Over the next two days, the Israelis bombed Rafah intensively.
19:02An estimated 200 Palestinians died.
19:06Some were militants, some women and children.
19:10Israel's been accused of using indiscriminate force
19:13while carrying out the Hannibal Directive.
19:18The blame that we have used it
19:22in order to attack civilians in Rafah
19:26is a huge mistake.
19:29You deny that?
19:31I'm not only denying, I'm talking about facts.
19:36Israel claimed it only bombed military targets in Rafah.
19:41But Asma al-Ghul's family home here was destroyed.
19:45Women and children were amongst the dead.
19:48When I heard the news and when I saw the bodies,
19:53like I know my uncles and others,
19:57I felt I am so angry. I'm so angry.
20:02Some of Asma's family belong to Hamas.
20:05But as a journalist, she's had her run-ins with the Islamist group,
20:09harassed for not wearing a headscarf on the beach.
20:13Your relatives had connections with Hamas.
20:16Surely that's why this house was attacked by the Israelis?
20:19Yes, not this uncle at all.
20:21Not this uncle? Not this uncle at all, no.
20:23They are not related to Hamas.
20:25If they are, I will say that. It's very easy.
20:28If they are, I will say that. It's very easy.
20:31This is war crime.
20:34The Israeli military says the house was a Hamas command and control centre,
20:39continuously used to plan terror attacks against Israel.
20:43They could not confirm if civilians were there when they bombed it.
20:51There's anger across the world
20:53over the civilian casualties caused by the Israelis in this conflict.
20:57They say they make every effort to avoid them.
21:00The camera's mounted right on the bottom of the plane
21:03and they can just circle around and see everything.
21:06I met one of the Israeli surveillance pilots.
21:09We cannot show his face.
21:12We have to make sure there's no people walking around,
21:15any civilians or anything like that,
21:17so we'll have to have cameras on that area
21:20before the bomb is actually dropped.
21:22There's a lot of people in this area.
21:32So if you're carrying out this detailed surveillance,
21:35how is it that so many civilians have been killed in Israeli airstrikes?
21:39While we have cameras surveying the area,
21:41we can only see what's going on outside.
21:43So obviously if people are inside these houses,
21:46Israel has developed a whole range of techniques
21:49to get the civilians away as far as possible from the battlefield.
21:55One controversial Israeli technique used in this war
21:58and over the last six years is what they call the knock on the roof.
22:02First, a non-explosive warning rocket is fired.
22:08The impact is intended to give people a few minutes
22:11to get out before the main attack.
22:14However, Israel justifies its methods of avoiding civilian casualties.
22:19Its bombs have killed hundreds of women and children.
22:22So has their military action been disproportionate?
22:26We have warned civilians.
22:29The Hamas could avoid many, many losses.
22:34So the blame is not on Israel, the blame is on the Hamas.
22:39And Israel is sorry for every loss of civilian life.
22:45The UN is now investigating alleged war crimes on both sides.
22:50Hamas is accused of using its own people as human shields
22:54and firing rockets indiscriminately at civilians in Israel.
23:03First, we do not target Israeli civilians.
23:06Second, we don't have accurate smart missiles like the Israeli military has.
23:11Give us those guided missiles, and we'll never launch rockets at just anyone.
23:16We'll only target the Israeli military.
23:20On the other side, alleged war crimes by Israel
23:23include hitting Palestinian medical staff.
23:30The shrapnel discharges.
23:34The shrapnel discharges.
23:36On July 30, paramedic Ibrahim Abu Al-Qais was in this ambulance when a call came.
23:43Shujaa was under Israeli fire again.
23:48When we headed for Shujaa, the situation from the start was incredibly dangerous.
23:53Every place we went to, we sensed that death was a certainty.
23:58The ambulances were being followed by local TV crews.
24:02Ibrahim, one of the first on the scene, went into a building to treat the wounded.
24:08Then in the street below him, there was another explosion.
24:1217 people were now dead, including a paramedic and a photographer.
24:19Unfortunately, there's no respect for the uniform or the ambulance.
24:24The planes bombing knew we were here.
24:27Or after they bombed us the first time,
24:29they knew another ambulance would be coming here soon.
24:36The Israeli army told us they are still investigating this incident
24:40involving the ambulances in Shujaa.
24:43The Israelis have also announced they are investigating possible war crimes
24:47by their own forces in five other cases.
24:52There were no comparable scenes in Israel
24:54like the ones the world saw daily from Gaza's hospitals during the war.
24:59And so, arguably, in many countries,
25:02Israel's lost the biggest battle in this conflict,
25:05the battle for public opinion.
25:09What should Israel do when five million civilians
25:14are under heavy attack of rockets?
25:18We should sit and wait.
25:21I'm asking all the international community
25:24what they have done if the same would happen in their country
25:30against their civilians.
25:33Thousands of Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv as the war drew to a close.
25:38The majority of Israelis don't think this conflict had any clear winner.
25:49Many of the tunnels are destroyed,
25:51but the war cost Israel the lives of 67 soldiers
25:55and the lives of more than 1,000 civilians.
25:59The war cost Israel the lives of 67 soldiers and six civilians,
26:03and Hamas is still in Gaza, armed with rockets.
26:07Many Israelis wanted their army to stay in Gaza
26:10until Hamas was crushed.
26:18When the ceasefire took hold,
26:20Hamas celebrated what they called their victory.
26:24They tightened their hold on Gaza,
26:26executing people they accused of being Israeli spies.
26:30But Hamas have made no solid gains in this war.
26:34There's no guarantee the blockade will be lifted,
26:37or they'll get the airport and the seaport they're demanding
26:40to open Gaza to the outside world.
26:45If the international community doesn't deliver this,
26:48or if Israel maneuvers and deceives,
26:50we'll fight and resume our struggle.
26:53These are our rights,
26:54and the whole world will be responsible for keeping Gaza under siege.
27:00The solution is not a military solution.
27:03The solution is diplomatic.
27:06We have to sit around the tables.
27:08Israel is committed to defend its sovereignty,
27:14to defend its citizens,
27:16and unfortunately, if we will have to do it again,
27:21we will do it without hesitation.
27:28Israel's now seized nearly 1,000 acres of the occupied West Bank
27:33in response to the killing of the three Israeli teenagers,
27:37the moves being condemned by the Palestinians and internationally.
27:42Last night, two Palestinians suspected of kidnapping the three boys
27:46were killed when the Israeli army tried to capture them.
27:51In Gaza, Asma is visiting baby Ibrahim,
27:54whose twin brother Mustafa was killed when their home was bombed.
27:58So the shrapnel's still inside?
28:01They said it's very dangerous to take it out.
28:06Ibrahim's still alive, but Mustafa was born in war and killed in the war.
28:12Asma now believes it is Hamas who will reap the advantage from this war.
28:17What Israel did in this war,
28:20they are creating more generations
28:23who will belong to resistance and Hamas and Jihad.
28:27There is a new generation raised in these feelings of revenge,
28:31death, blood and war.
28:34So how we will change this?
28:39Once again, they're trying to rebuild their lives in Gaza.
28:44Peace talks are due to start this week,
28:47but people here and in Israel don't believe they've seen the end of war.
29:17For more UN videos visit www.un.org