Israel has set up a system of large pumps it could use to flood the Hamas tunnel network in Gaza with seawater, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

Quoting US officials, the report says that the IDF completed assembling pumps last month that are capable of pumping thousands of cubic meters of water per hour from the Mediterranean into the tunnels, flooding them within weeks.

Israel, which told the US about the plan early last month hasn’t yet decided to move ahead with the plan but hasn’t ruled it out.

A source familiar with the plan said that the lengthy process of flooding the tunnels would allow Hamas terrorists, and potentially hostages, to leave the tunnels.

“We are not sure how successful pumping will be since nobody knows the details of the tunnels and the ground around them,” the person said. “It’s impossible to know if that will be effective because we don’t know how seawater will drain in tunnels no one has been in before.”

It’s difficult to assess the impact of pumping seawater into the tunnels as it’s unknown how permeable they are, said Jon Alterman, senior vice president at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“It’s hard to tell what pumping seawater will do to the existing water and sewage infrastructure. It is hard to tell what it will do to groundwater reserves. And it’s hard to tell the impact on the stability of nearby buildings,” Alterman said.

The flooding of Hamas tunnels in the area is not unprecedented. In 2015, Egypt used seawater to flood tunnels used by Hamas smugglers under the Rafah border crossing with Gaza.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)