Two feet wide and less than six feet high, the tunnel led deep under a large hospital in the south of Gaza.
The underground air bore the stench of what felt like human remains. After traveling about 40 meters along the tunnel, we found the likely cause.
In a small room to which the tunnel led, the ground was stained with blood. It is here, according to the Israeli army, that Muhammad Sinwar – one of the best militant commanders in Hamas – was killed last month After a dam near Israeli strikes.
What we have seen in this dark and narrow tunnel is one of the greatest Rorschach war tests, the incarnation of a broader narrative battle between the Israelis and the Palestinians on the way the conflict should be represented.
The army escorted a journalist from the New York Times at the tunnel on Sunday afternoon, as part of a short and controlled visit to international journalists that the Israelis hoped to prove that Hamas uses civil infrastructure as a shield for militant activity.
For the Palestinians, the attack on Israel and the subsequent capture of the hospital, the hospital complex has highlighted its own contempt for civil activity.
