Egypt has begun construction to expand its buffer zone from 500 meters to a kilometer wide, along the border with Gaza, as it continues its war on terror in the Sinai Peninsula.

Numerous terrorist groups had already made themselves comfortable in the wide expanses of Sinai when Muslim Brotherhood-backed Mohammed Morsi became the first democratically-elected president of Egypt. He was deposed a year later by the military after more than a million citizens protested the hardline Islamist government.

During Morsi’s one-year tenure numerous terrorist groups flocked to the region and set up training and operations bases — including Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and others. The local Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, originally linked to Al Qaeda, recently swore allegiance to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorist group.

Originally, the buffer zone was cleared in February 2014 to 300 meters in urban areas. It was 500 meters wide in rural areas.

Security sources told the Palestinian Ma’an news agency some 1,200 houses in the area are to be evacuated and demolished.

Homeowners will be reimbursed by the government, however.

Each homeowner is to receive 1,500 Egyptian pounds ($209) to cover rentals for the next three months, said North Sinai district governor Abd al-Fattah Harhour.

In addition, for each square meter of cement, each family will receive 1,200 pounds $167.) The government will add 700 pounds ($97) for each square meter of the house based on the bearing wall system, Harhour said.

The Egyptian government has been actively destroying smuggling tunnels under the border created by Gaza’s ruling Hamas terrorists. Hamas was spawned by Egypt’s outlawed radical Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.

After discovering last week, a tunnel from Gaza into the Sinai that extended 1850 meters, Egypt has decide to extend it sterile zone along its 14 kilometer Gazan border from 500 meters to 1000 meters it was announced on Thursday.

So far Egypt has destroyed 500 Rafah homes, affecting 25,000 people, and that number will now increase.

Egypt has paid out close to 8 million dollars to Rafah residents who homes were destroyed.The town of Rafah is located on the southern end of Gaza and is split in two by the border, half on the Gazan side, and half on the Egyptian/Sinai side.

In addition, Egypt is digging a trench along the 50 kilometer border that goes down to a depth of 50 meters to help stop the infiltrations from Gaza into the Sinai.

Egypt is still angry at the recent Gazan terror attack that killed over 30 Egyptian security personnel, which it blames on Hamas.

It has completely shut down the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza.

Only Israel’s crossings into Gaza remain open, and Israel is allowing in construction material this coming week, which the UN claims will be monitored for misuse.

Gaza needs the construction material to rebuild homes that were destroyed after Hamas attacked Israel this summer and instigated a war.

Egyptian President A-Sisi said on Egyptian TV that he wasn’t going to allow Sinai to become a staging ground for terror attacks against Israel.

Amid a shaky and uncertain ceasefire with Hamas, Israelis did not celebrate in the streets as Hamas and the people in the Gaza Strip did with fireworks and rifles shot in the air. As long as the force behind the rocket fire and a massive underground tunnel terror network remains in power and is backed by Qatari funds, Israelis remain wary.

An article published in the Institute for Palestine Studies two years ago by The Economist reporter, Nicolas Pelham, thoroughly examines the development of Gaza’s tunnel phenomenon over the past 10 years – a network described as “an underground city,” according to an Israeli military spokesman, Capt. Eytan Buchman in July.

“Much to the misfortune of the people of Gaza, Hamas has invested far more resources in “underground Gaza” than in “upper Gaza” wrote Shlomi Eldar in an article for news source Al-Monitor. “The change and reform that Hamas offered its voters was invested in its tunnels at the expense of the people of Gaza.”

While Hamas’s tunnel infrastructure was once utilized exclusively for smuggling weapons, funds, good and terrorists into the Gaza Strip, Operation Protective Edge revealed that Hamas has expanded its extensive tunnel network into Israel – to attack and kill IDF soldiers and Israeli civilians living in communities on the border.

The IDF estimates that today Hamas invests more than $1- $10 million into the excavation and maintenance of every tunnel, which equals 350 truckloads of building supplies. It goes without saying, that with those materials, Hamas could have invested into the welfare of its own people, using that money to build medical clinics, homes, mosques and schools. Instead, with Israel discovering and demolishing 36 tunnels during the war, Hamas wasted over $90 million with its underground terrorist infrastructure.

Indeed, Hamas has been engaged in the tunnel industry for the past 14 years since its rise to power in 2007. Prior to Operation Cast Lead, the Islamist movement of Hamas oversaw a sophisticated and complex underground tunnel program, utilizing Google Earth to map routes and to stay on course. Each tunnel dug cost anywhere from $80,000 to $200,000 to build. According to Pelham’s published report in 2012, mosque preachers praised the commercial tunnel ventures as “resistance” activity and hailed workers killed on the job as “martyrs.”

“Private investors, including Hamas members who raised capital through their mosque networks, partnered with families straddling the border. Lawyers drafted contracts for cooperatives to build and operate commercial tunnels, which detailed the number of partners, the value of respective shares and the way to distribute shareholder profits,” wrote Pelham.

These ‘partners’ comprised of all sectors of Palestinian society. Pelham cites Abu Ahmad, a taxi driver who invested $20,000 of his wife’s jewelry to partner with nine others in a tunnel ‘venture.’ Within a month, a trade tunnel under joint-partnership could generate revenue to cover its initial construction costs, with Gazan and Egyptian partners and owners splitting earnings equally.

From a few dozen factional tunnels in mid-2005, Hamas’s takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007 ensured that by December of 2008 during Operation Cast Lead, the tunnels now numbered to at least 500. According to Penham’s article, the tunnel trade revenue in 2005 stood at an average of $30 million per year. But after Hamas entered the picture, the tunnel revenue increased to $36 million per month. Meanwhile, the Gaza Strip has remained in poverty with the per capita income in 2011 listed at $1,165.

The Hamas Interior Ministry even established the Tunnel Affairs Commission (TAC) in 2009 following Operation Cast Lead to oversee and regulate tunnel activities as well as ensuring safe working conditions, particularly when 160 children used by Hamas as child laborers, were killed digging underground tunnels.

“Former senator and 2012 presidential candidate Rick Santorum began a three-day trip to Israel on Monday “to show solidarity with the State of Israel…and to reaffirm the moral and strategic imperative of maintaining a strong, close, enduring U.S.-Israeli alliance,” according to his Conservative group ‘Patriot Voices.”

The first stop on Santorum’s itinerary was a visit to the City of David. “Walking through the City of David, seeing the excavations and seeing the Bible come to life, is really quite remarkable… It’s a great start to the understanding of Jerusalem, not just for Jews, but for all of us,” he said.

Santorum connected his visit to Operation Protective Edge as he made his way through the drainage channel beneath the Herodian road, leading from the Shiloach Pool up to the Western Wall Plaza.

“Walking through the tunnel, where the last 2,000 Jews were killed by the Romans, when they sacked Jerusalem [and] to be walking through those tunnels, at a time when tunnels are being built to kill Jews, was a striking contrast, and one which will stick with me for a long time,” he explained.

Santorum’s itinerary also includes visiting an Iron Dome battery and meetings with Israeli government and IDF officials, Israeli soldiers, and residents of the south directly impacted by the war with Hamas.

4:40pm The injured Israeli is an IDF soldier, who was on his way home. He was seriously injured.

4:28pm Ongoing manhunt for terrorist who shot at a Bus Stop Shelter near the Har HaZofim Tunnel entrance. Terrorist shot an Israeli in the stomach, ran a hundred meters away where he was picked up by a motorcycle. The terrorists fled to the nearby Wadi Jos Eastern Jerusalem neighborhood. Helicopters overhead in Jerusalem.

4:20pm Breaking News: Israeli civilian moderately wounded by gunfire in Jerusalem near the Har HaTzofim/Mount Scopus tunnel entrance. The shooting happened near the hitchhiking post.

Police are in a manhunt after the alleged terrorist shooter who was riding a motorcycle.

A joint Joe Settler and Jameel exclusive article.

As the IDF searches for tunnels near Gaza, the Hebrew University’s Center for Cave Exploration in the Geology Department stumbled across the deepest and longest underground cave and tunnel in Israel, descending to a depth of 187 meters.

The natural cave was discovered up north, near the Lebanese border.

Lebanon has caves that reach a depth of 600 meters, and deeper caves may yet be found in Israel.

The cave was explored by Vladimir Boslov, Yuri Lisovitch, and Boaz Langford.

Much to the delight of the Palestinian Authority, the tunnel’s discovery proves for them that Palestinians lived in Israel 100 million years ago, digging tunnels even way back then.

UNESCO immediately and unanimously accepted the Palestinian claim, and declared the cave a Palestinian Heritage Site.

Later in the day, the UN expressed “shock” when their inspectors discovered ancient explosives and primitive Hamas rockets hidden inside the cave, which they promptly handed back over to Hamas.

Released for publication:

Golani 12 Battalion Commander (Magad), Shai Siman-Tov, was seriously injured yesterday, after a Gaza tunnel collapsed on him.

Siman-Tov was transported to a hospital for surgery.

Refuah Shleimah