THIS SUBTERRANEAN network of terror tunnels built by Hamas over 10 years to gain access into Israel was supposedly destroyed by the Israeli Defence Force in the 2014 conflict.

Since then, Palestinian fighters have been busy scraping and chipping away underground, reconstructing blown up passages and forming new ones, allegedly lined with concrete stolen from stocks shipped in to reinforce Israeli houses damaged in the fighting.

The tunnels, running at depths of between 30 and 40m and reaching dozens of metres into Israel from the Gaza Strip, are being constructed at a rate of almost 10km a month.

So much progress has been made that Israeli officials suspect the original 32 tunnels demolished during Operation Protective Edge have been completely rebuilt thanks to the “day and night toiling of Hamas terrorists".

News that the IDF’s mission, which had been carried out with much fanfare, had failed came dramatically in February this year when seven Hamas soldiers were buried alive after a tunnel they were digging collapsed around them.

Afterwards, residents of Moshav Pri Gan, an Israeli town near Gaza, complained that the “underground digging” had come so close to their homes they “felt the floors shake”.

The revelation has shocked the government into approving construction of a US$530m (AUD $700m) barrier to be built along the length of the 60km border between Israel and the Gaza Strip to protect Israeli towns from cross-border attacks.

According to the Times of Israel, the border wall will be the “largest project in Israeli military history”.

Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot Members of the Islamic Jihad’s armed wing, the Al-Quds Brigade, are using the reconstructed network to transport rockets and mortars in preparation for the next showdown with Israel.

He claimed Hamas has vowed to launch strikes on Israel if it goes ahead with the underground barrier.

Ismail Radwan in June told a Hamas-affiliated news site in June the project indicated Israel’s “failure to face the tunnels.” He stressed that the wall would “not limit the resistance’s ability to defend our people.”

The tunnels have traditionally served as command centres, infiltration points, weapons stores, rocket-launcher hiding sites as well as hiding places during conflict.

As the IDF map shows, the tunnels dug into Israel were created in parallel pairs, with multiple shafts to the surface for multiple entry points. The underground network allowed fighters to move unseen between homes and alleyways within Gaza.

“Israel has sought to find a technological or physical answer to the cross-border tunnels for over a decade,” the Times of Israel wrote in an editorial this week.

“Israeli security thought it had adequate intelligence about Gaza. It was in for a surprise. It was not just the labyrinth of tunnels discovered, much more extensive than expected, but the stockpiles: thousands of weapons, Russian antitank missiles, explosive devices, and large amounts of tranquillisers, handcuffs, syringes, ropes. The tools of capture on a large scale.

Some of the tunnels are very deep, big enough to hold vehicles.”

According to the paper, the tunnels were dug with electric jackhammers some 20m below the surface, and reinforced with concrete made on site in workshops adjacent to the tunnels.

“What’s going on here?” asked journalist Stephen M Flatow in a Jewish News Service article titled “The terror tunnels are back, but the world is silent".

“We thought the Hamas terror tunnels were a thing of the past. They were supposed to have been destroyed in the 2014 Gaza war.”

Flatow claimed the Obama administration reneged on its promise to ensure cement entering Gaza would be used to repair war-damaged homes.

“Thanks to former State Department official Dennis Ross, we now know what happened to all those US promise,” he writes.

“’I argued with Israeli leaders and security officials, telling them they needed to allow more construction materials, including cement, into Gaza so that housing, schools, and basic infrastructure could be built,’ Ross disclosed. “They countered that Hamas would misuse it, and they were right’.”