Israel-Palestine war: Former Hamas chief claims Israel planning to flood Gaza tunnels with nerve gas
Former Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal has claimed that Israel is planning to flood Hamas tunnels with a type of nerve gas or chemical weapon.
Speaking to Egypt's Sada El Balad TV channel on Thursday, Meshaal also claimed that the US had told Israel to delay its looming ground invasion and continue pummelling Gaza from the sky and that Washington had deployed soldiers from its elite Delta Force to help in securing the release of hostages.
"We have information from trusted sources that the [US's] plan with Israel is to send special American/Israeli forces, administered by the US and executed either by Israel or combined [US and Israel] to... use nerve gases, aiming to paralyse the capabilities of Palestinian soldiers in the tunnels and trenches without killing him so they do not kill the hostages or captives held in these tunnels," he said.
Gaza's vast tunnel network provides Hamas fighters passage under populated urban areas and also serves as a place where Hamas leaders and their weapons are shielded from potential air attacks. According to a 2014 report by Al Jazeera, there are an estimated 500 tunnels cutting across the besieged Gaza Strip.
Middle East Eye reported on Wednesday that Palestinian groups expected Israel to flood Hamas's tunnels with a type of nerve gas or chemical weapon under the surveillance of US Delta Force commandos.
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An Arab source familiar with Palestinian groups told MEE that the plan "hinges on the element of surprise... using internationally forbidden gases, particularly nerve gas, and chemical weapons".
Israel is not a signatory to the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention but the use of biological weapons has been illegal for nearly a century, since the 1925 Geneva Protocol.
Inhaled or absorbed through the skin, most nerve gases can kill in anywhere between one to 10 minutes by crippling the respiratory centre of the central nervous system and paralysing the muscles around the lungs.
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Symptoms of exposure to the agent include nausea and violent headaches, blurred vision, drooling, muscle convulsions, respiratory arrest, and the loss of consciousness.
Unconventional ground invasion
Speaking on Thursday, Meshaal also acknowledged that a ground invasion was looming but said it would be unconventional, adding that both Israel and the US wanted to limit the number of casualties on their side.
"They (the Americans) say that they don’t want to repeat the Fallujah scenario which is land invasion and confrontation, but rather the Mosul scenario which is to bombard from above," Meshaal said, referring to events following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, where US forces faced fierce resistance from Iraqi groups during a ground offensive in the Battle of Fallujah.
The so-called Battle of Mosul was a joint military effort to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, also known as the Islamic State (IS), where heavy aerial bombardment destroyed much of the old city, leaving heavy civilian casualties, and paved the way to wrest back control of Mosul from IS.
"This is the first path, and it is dangerous, it means that [Israel] should not hurry into the land invasion, [they] should bomb, destroy, displace people as much as they like. For the first time, Israel is given this open time."
US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin has held near-daily phone calls with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, to discuss operations; while senior US military officials with knowledge of urban warfare have also been dispatched to Israel.
Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that US officials had persuaded Israel to hold off its ground offensive until US air-defence systems could be placed in the region.
When asked if the US was urging Israel to delay the ground invasion, US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that "the Israelis are making their own decisions".
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