The sense of security which Israelis felt until two weeks ago came tumbling down with a crash.

Residents of Israel's southern communities who have been reporting for years that they were hearing digging noises at night are now living in an inconceivable, nightmarish reality. To date, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have unearthed 31 tunnels, but there is concern that the number runs much higher. Worse, even once all the tunnels are ostensibly exposed, there will always be that lingering possibility that one or two still remain. That alone is enough to spell catastrophe for the Israeli home front.

Before noon on July 28, five Hamas terrorists burst out of one of these tunnels, not far from kibbutz Ein Hashlosha. Their element of surprise was impeccable. This tunnel had already been tracked down by the IDF and had been taken care of from the Gaza side. As a result, it was “checked off” from the list of effective tunnels. In IDF jargon, the tunnel was “cleared.” But it was anything but “cleared.” The five terrorists emerged from the tunnel with total surprise, killing five IDF soldiers and seizing, according to Hamas, the rifle of one of the Israeli fatalities. Then they fled. Only one terrorist was killed while his four comrades returned via this so-called “cleared” tunnel.

But there's more to this story. In northern Israel, too, along the Lebanese border, residents have been reporting for years that they could hear digging noises at night. In the north, the terrain is much less amenable to digging than in loess [sediment of sand and silt] — the common soil in the south of Israel. But if the North Koreans were able to dig tunnels through granite, so can Hezbollah's Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. It's all a matter of function and time. Why do they hear those digging noises especially at night? It's because the relative quiet at night augments your auditory sense. Incidentally, an interesting fact that was gleaned from the Israeli defense establishment is that women, more than men, report hearing digging noises at night. It turns out that women have a heightened auditory sensitivity in the wee hours of the night. Women are attuned to hearing their children sleeping in an adjacent room, whereas men tend to dive right into a deep slumber.