Red Cross in Gaza closes office due to protests

While the group, which has run the coastal enclave of Gaza since 2007, has in the past executed Palestinians accused of spying for Israel, it is not known for having executed its own members in peacetime, according to AP indicating that Mr. Eshtawi could have been killed for reasons other than spying.

Gaza’s tunnel networks are notoriously risky.

In a rare public recognition of the movement’s efforts to build a web of tunnels on Gaza’s border with Israel, Hamas’s prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, has paid tribute to the buried fighters.

Ten other Palestinians have died in three tunnel collapses in the past two weeks, nine of them members of the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades.

Many Palestinian political analysts have ruled out that Israel is likely to launch a new war on the Gaza Strip, due to what they described by “political brakes”, which would prevent any military confrontation in the foreseeable future between Israel and Hamas.

“The rockets fired from the Gaza Strip into Israeli towns affect Israel, but the Iron Dome reduced their impact”.

In a recent speech, Al-Qassam Brigades spokesman Abu Obaida warned Israel against even considering a fresh onslaught.

“The next U.S. president will have to deal with an Israel determined to permanently occupy all the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, including where 2.5 million West Bank Palestinians live”, he wrote, referring to the West Bank, or what the Israeli authorities refer to as Judea and Samaria. Israelis living near the border have reported hearing tunneling sounds under their homes recently. “This weapon will have the final say and will turn the table on Israel’s intentions to wage a new war on the Gaza Strip”.

Palestinian Hamas militants take part in the funeral of their two comrades, who were killed when a tunnel collapse on Tuesday, in the village of Al-Moghraga near central Gaza Strip, February 3, 2016.

Underlying the war of words between Gaza and Jerusalem is a growing concern that the military wing of Hamas, which has invested a lot of the movement’s limited resources in the tunnels, might decide to use them to attack Israeli targets before a new Israeli underground defence system is fully operational and renders them obsolete.