Tunnel Warfare: Grappling with the Legal and Military Challenges of Subterranean Combat

Speaker: Daphne Richemond-Barak, assistant professor; Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy, and Strategy, Reichman University, Israel

From the first World War to Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Gaza, underground warfare has always represented one of the deadliest and most complicated combat environments. Israel went into the current war possessing the most advanced military capabilities in detection, mapping, and destruction of tunnels, yet this neither deterred Hamas from digging or lessened the challenge of subterranean fighting.

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Daphne Richemond-Barak is an assistant professor at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy, and serves as the Academic Head of the International Program in Government (RRIS) and as Senior Researcher at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT). She is also an adjunct scholar at the Modern War Institute at West Point and a senior fellow at the Lieber Institute for Law and Land Warfare, also at West Point. In 2019, her book 'Underground Warfare' was awarded the Prize Chaikin by the Chair in Geostrategy at the University of Haifa for its contribution to the geostrategy of Israel and the Middle East.

Dr. Richemond-Barak holds a Maitrise from Université Panthéon-Assas (Paris II), a Diploma in Legal Studies from Oxford University (Hertford College), an LL.M. from Yale Law School, and a Ph.D. from Tel Aviv University. She was awarded the Fulbright Scholarship, and was a recipient of the European Commission Scholarship, the Hertford College Prize, and the Oxford Prize for Distinction. Prior to joining the IDC, Dr. Richemond-Barak served as a clerk at the International Court of Justice, and worked as an attorney in the New York office of Cleary Gottlieb.
 

During the 2024 winter quarter (January-March) FSI's Visiting Fellows in Israel Studies program is hosting a series of webinars exploring various aspects of contemporary Israeli politics, societal and security challenges. Webinars will take place on Wednesdays, 10:00-11:15am PST (20:00-21:15pm, Israel Time). Each webinar will feature a guest speaker from Israel or the U.S and will include a lecture or moderated conversation with the guest, followed by a Q&A with the audience.