A year into Israel’s fight against Hamas, it has become clear that the military “centre of gravity” – the most important element of the conflict – is not the missiles or manpower of the terrorist group. Rather, it is the 650-plus km of tunnels carved out under the Gaza Strip. From those tunnels, Hamas and its sponsor, Iran, were able to train, equip, organise and launch the horrific attacks of Oct 7.

The Israel Defence Forces have now publicly released a handbook taken from Hamas in 2019 that details how the group sought to maximise the lethality of capabilities it painstakingly built up underground and out of sight. The group trained forces to fight in the subterranean environment using cover of darkness, night-vision goggles, split-second timing, Global Positioning System trackers, elaborate camouflage and protective blast doors. Hamas troops managed to create an entirely different battlefield from the traditional fight above ground.