Terror tunnels from Gaza have been a scary threat – crossing under the border and potentially penetrating deep into Israeli territory. I remember driving down near the Gaza border in the summer of 2014 to help deliver food and encouragement to Israeli soldiers, while my brother was serving in an infantry brigade there. It was during one of the mini-wars Israel has had to fight against Gaza because of rocket fire from Gaza onto Israeli citizen populations.

I remember the tangible fear of mortar fire from above, and even more than that the gnawing thought that a Hamas terrorist might pop up out of the ground at any given moment from a hidden terror tunnel. Tunnels were a brand new threat.

In that conflict the Israeli army was able to discover and neutralize many tunnels but was unable to guarantee it had discovered them all. “Seeing” through dirt is hard to do. Since then the IDF has put enormous effort and resources into deep barriers, new technological methods of discovering tunnels and training army units to deal with the threat.

Just this past week the IDF discovered another tunnel before it was extended past the IDF barrier. The tunnel-digging was thwarted with the help of Israel’s tunnel-discovering technologies, integrated into the underground Sensory Concrete Barrier. The Barrier has cost Israel around $1 billion, but is proving its worth.