Israel mulls flooding Gaza tunnels with seawater amid war with Hamas. Why is this catastrophic for Palestinians?

livemint.com:

Wall Street Journal report mentions that Israel plans to flood the tunnel system in Gaza with seawater. Israel has assembled a large system of pumps that may be used to flood tunnels used by militant group Hamas under the Gaza strip in a bid to drive out fighters, the report mentioned.

Notably, this action if crystallized will spell doom for civilians in Gaza, who have overcrowded United Nation shelters as Israel has left no place safe in the besieged conclave. Southern Gaza was declared a safe zone at the start of the war in October.

However, Israel brutally dismissed the consideration and has increased the intensity of their genocide on Palestinians in Gaza. UN agencies have said that lack of fresh water, food, and fuel have triggered an alarming surge in contagious, and infectious diseases in the overcrowded shelters, including Hepatitis A.

Around the middle of November, Israel's army completed the set-up of at least five pumps about a mile north of the Al-Shati refugee camp that could move thousands of cubic meters of water per hour, flooding the tunnels within weeks, the WSJ report said. The Wall Street Journal said an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) official declined to comment on the flooding plan but was quoted as saying: “The IDF is operating to dismantle Hamas’s terror capabilities in various ways, using different military and technological tools." Israel unleashing seawater in the war-torn strip would have catastrophic effect on the civilians in Gaza reeling from severe fresh water shortage.