Shuja’iyya, Gaza—The IDF disclosed on Wednesday that the army operates dozens of military bases within Gaza and along the border to Israel that enable the IDF to control as much as 63 percent of the territory in the Palestinian enclave, according to an IDF commander. The stunning revelation of the number of bases came amid the IDF showing a small group of journalists on Wednesday a sprawling Hamas terror tunnel just a mere 750 meters from the boundary of Kibbutz Nahal Oz.
Today: IDF reveals 500M-long terror tunnel in Gaza – Benjamin Weinthal @BenWeinthal reports for C14 from Gaza – watch 👇 pic.twitter.com/6kwbO6KtDE
— C14 News | EN (@c14english) September 23, 2026
An IDF commander for the Southern Command said the tunnel is more than 500 meters long and is part of a “city under a city” in the Gaza Strip. The commander said that IDF has “destroyed 60 kilometers of tunnels” on his watch in the Gaza strip, adding, however, that it will “take years” to destroy the remaining tunnel system spread out across Gaza.
The tiny gas-rich Islamist state of Qatar pumped at least $2 billion into Hamas’ coffers over the decade prior to Hamas’ invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023. The Qatari funding enabled Hamas to build its subterranean network —the so-called Gaza Metro— of more than 500 kilometers of tunnels. Hamas slaughtered over 1,200 people on October 7, including more than 40 Americans. The Iranian regime-backed terrorist organization Hamas kidnapped 251 people from the Kibbutzim on the border to Gaza.
2+“It is hard to imagine but it [tunnel] is all connected and goes back to the [Gaza] city.” The Hamas terrorists, he said, can stay underground for many months. The newly discovered tunnel has a bathroom, rooms with air conditioning, a water system, and sleeping quarters. According to the IDF commander, a total of 18 IDF soldiers and civilians were taken from Kibbutz Nahal Oz to the terror tunnel system. Israeli hostages might have been held in the newly revealed tunnel, according to IDF military officials.
2+The IDF commander from the Southern Command issued a dire warning just weeks before the third anniversary of the Hamas invasion: “There are thousands of Hamas terrorists in Gaza who are still recruiting from the population. They have not given up their weapons. They have not given up the idea to destroy Israel.”
He added that Hamas is “building IEDs [Improvised Explosive Devices] from unexploded bombs we left in Gaza.” Just days ago, according to the IDF, Hamas targeted an unnamed engineering vehicle with a roadside bomb (IED) on the Israeli side of the “Yellow Line” in northern Gaza. The yellow line marked by yellow bricks separates Hamas-controlled territory from the Israeli-conquered land.
The IDF says the roadside attack was a “blatant violation of the ceasefire agreement by the Hamas terror group.” The IDF responded with military strikes on Tuesday against Hamas infrastructure. “This is a just war against a terrorist organization that still wants to eliminate Israel after three years of war,” said the commander from the Southern Command.
2+Minister Israel Katz announced in an X/Twitter post on Wednesday during Channel 14’s embed with the Israeli army in Gaza that the IDF and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) killed Hamas Finance Department Chief Muhammad Abu Alwan in a joint operation in the Khan Yunis area of Gaza. Defense Minister Katz said on X: “We praise the IDF and the Shin Bet for the precise operation and for the aggressive activity to thwart our enemies – and we continue to pursue Hamas commanders and operatives, to strike at its sources of funding, and to destroy its terrorist infrastructure.”
The IDF escorted the embedded journalists to a military post inside of Gaza overlooking a former agricultural field in Deir al-Balah to delineate the yellow line that prohibits Palestinians from entering the Israeli-controlled section of Gaza. The clear day provided a view of the Mediterranean Sea and an Israeli naval vessel patrolling the coast of Gaza.
An IDF military official from the Gaza Strip at the military outpost said “Hamas is doing everything to rebuild. A Gaza boy at the age 15 [in 2023] is now recruitable.” With a view toward the American congressional elections in November and Israel’s election in October, the IDF military official noted that “Hamas is trying to figure out if time is working for them or not. If they will understand that they are completely with their back to the wall, they will try to change their reality with strategic cards.”
The IDF military official stressed that Hamas’ capture of hostages is a key tactic. He cited the example of Israel agreeing to release over 1,000 Palestinian terrorists, including the mastermind of the October 7 invasion, Yahya Sinwar, to secure the freedom of captured IDF soldier, Gilad Shalit, in 2011.
He noted that most of the Kibbutzim affected by Hamas terrorist attack on October 7 are “the baseline of the hard left in Israel, of peace and co-existence, “adding that “most of them employed Gazans in the Kibbutzim.” The ‘Palestinian’ workers in southern Israel served as informants for Hamas about security weaknesses at the Kibbutzim ahead of its invasion.
The military official from the Gaza Strip said, “During that morning that I was happy that my grandfather, a Holocaust survivor, wasn’t alive because it was shocking to discover that the IDF was not well prepared. A few minutes of us unalerted, that would be fate of all of us.”