עב

Installation

The Tunnel

A tunnel built to raise awareness of the hostages and to demand that they be brought home. Dark inside, with echoes of gunfire and explosions. At the far end, two words, lit: ויהי אור, “Let there be light”.

Inside the Tunnel installation. The walls are covered in the handwriting of everyone who walked through, and there is light at the far end.

How it started

A few weeks after 7 October Roni's friend, the designer Avia Maron, came to him about a collaboration, a performance built into an installation, together with the choreographer Galit Liss and the musician Avi Belleli, to echo the call to bring the hostages home.

The idea of building a tunnel came very quickly. An attempt to come close and touch the terror for a moment, to make the reality the hostages are living in real, and alongside it the hope and the light coming from the end of the tunnel.

The Tunnel

What happens inside

Visitors were invited to walk the length of it, and to draw and write their own message on the walls as a demand to bring the hostages home.

The walls filled with the handwriting of everyone who had walked through before them.

The Tunnel

A film from the installation

Where it stood

  1. Suzanne Dellal Centre, Tel Aviv

    Suzanne Dellal Centre, Tel Aviv

    November to December 2023

    Within Tel Aviv's Lighting Up the Light programme, the performance and installation were shown on the Suzanne Dellal plaza.

  2. Hostages Square, Tel Aviv

    Hostages Square, Tel Aviv

    13 January 2024

    For the hundredth day of captivity the tunnel was rebuilt in four days, with many volunteers and the families' headquarters. It opened to the public after the hostages' families had walked through it.

  3. The mobile tunnel, the Netherlands

    The mobile tunnel, the Netherlands

    May 2024 to September 2025

    Rachel Meijler, an Israeli Dutch gallery owner, came to Roni about building a mobile tunnel. They built it together inside a trailer, with twenty five volunteers, and it opened on the Museumplein in Amsterdam. From there it went to The Hague and Rotterdam, where Dutch members of parliament walked through it alongside passers by, and on to Urk, Nijmegen, Groningen, Tilburg, Eindhoven, Wageningen, Maastricht and two Amsterdam campuses, until September 2025. In the Netherlands it also drew protest against it, and needed security.

All of them are home

On 13 October 2025 the living hostages came home. On 26 January 2026 the last hostage, Ran Gvili, was brought back, and since then no hostages are held in Gaza. The living and the dead, all of them are home.

The Tunnel was built so that this day would come.

How it was built

Twenty five metres of tunnel, built from wood pallets and cardboard tubes and lined with PVC sheeting. Sandbags hold the structure up, and it is painted to look like concrete. Materials you can put back together anywhere, which is what let it travel.

People gave their energy and their skill to put it up, and all of it was done by volunteers. Everyone hoped it would become unnecessary before it was even finished. It did not.

Made with

  • Avia Marondesigner
  • Galit Lisschoreography
  • Rachel Meijlerwho initiated the mobile tunnel in the Netherlands
The Tunnel

What was written about the Tunnel

The Tunnel was covered in print and on television in 9 languages. These are the pieces where the installation is the subject, or where Roni is quoted.

Hebrew

English

Dutch

German

French

Spanish

Italian

Portuguese

Romanian