"We are completely dependent on our Egyptian sources, and they have a
certain amount of space they are allowed to play in. An RPG
(rocket-propelled grenade) is the maximum weapon that they can get away with
selling us, because they aren't really much use against a tank any more. If
you ask the Egyptians for modern anti-tank or anti-aircraft missiles,
they'll say 'No way'."

Tunnel vision keeps Gaza goods flowing
Ed O'Loughlin, Gaza - The Age (Australia) December 27, 2007
www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/12/26/1198345080167.html

LIFE is pretty good right now for Gaza's professional tunnel smugglers.

Israel's blockade of the sealed-off Palestinian enclave means that
medicines, building materials, fuel, tobacco, luxuries and all but basic
foodstuffs are frequently scarce or unavailable, pushing up demand for the
smugglers' wares.

The collapse of the Palestinian Authority and tolerance on the part of the
Israeli Defence Force has persuaded some tunnel diggers that it is now safe
to come out from underground.

In the southern town of Rafah, large plastic tents have sprouted up along
the border with Egypt, amid the rubble of houses bulldozed by the Israeli
Army to prevent smuggling when the Israelis still held a strip of territory
along the frontier. The tents, complete with generators and water supplies,
shelter the entrances to new tunnels brazenly operating under the eyes of
defence force drones.

Nevertheless, "Abu Mussab", 38, one of Rafah's biggest commercial smugglers,
speaks nostalgically about the recent past.

"Last week I smuggled 100 rifles in. They cost me $US700 ($A800) each and
when I sold them here I could only get $US500 for them," he said. "In the
past we could smuggle weapons in for both Fatah and Hamas, when they were
fighting each other, but now there is no internal fighting and Hamas
controls everything. Nobody wants weapons any more."

In the past week, he says, his teams smuggled in medicine, paint, glue,
plastic for making soles for shoes, food preservatives, glassware, a generic
version of Viagara, cheese, tinned beef and kits to convert petrol engines
to run on cooking gas.

"It's not nearly as profitable as bringing in weapons," he said. "For
instance, I as a boss can make $US10,000 a month now from this trade, while
a worker might get $US1000. But when the weapons trade was good I could make
as much as $US200,000 sometimes, and my workers might get $US20,000."

According to "Ahmed", 25, one of Abu Mussab's junior associates, it can take
months to dig a tunnel several hundred metres long and 1.5 metres across,
and the race is then on to smuggle in as much as you can before the tunnel
collapses, is shut down by Egyptian authorities or destroyed by the Israeli
military. "I won't be a millionaire but for a young guy it's pretty good
money," Ahmed says. "I can make between $US10,000 and $US20,000 from every
tunnel I work on."

Tunnelling through Rafah's sandy ground is a dangerous business, even
without the intervention of the Israeli military.

Abu Mussab says tunnel smuggling began in the 1980s, and about 20 Rafah men
have died in collapses, all since the present intifada began in September
2000. "Before that tunnelling was a lot easier and safer. The houses in
Rafah were right along the border, before the Israelis bulldozed them all,
and you could dig for 50 metres and be on the other side. Because the
tunnels were so short and because the borders were more open then, it was
easy to get cheap wood so you could have props to hold up the whole length
of the tunnel. Now we're having to do without wooden props and dig tunnels
that can be 1500 metres long."

Abu Mussab says he is one of five major operators who sponsor and equip
tunnel crews, cultivate Egyptian suppliers and pay off Egyptian border
guards. He estimates there could be as many as 50 tunnels in use or under
construction. He operates two and rents a third when he has big shipments
coming through.

Ahmed shows us the opening to another tunnel, currently disused, in the
basement of a demolished house on the edge of the bulldozed zone. He says it
could be reopened in the event of a new crackdown by the Israelis or by the
Islamic fundamentalist Hamas movement, which has tried to control smuggling
since it seized Gaza in June.

This month Hamas police publicly burned hundreds of kilograms of drugs
smuggled into Gaza through the tunnels, and it also keeps a close eye on
shipments of weapons and ammunition.

"I don't pay any tax to Hamas and in the beginning I had problems with
them," Abu Mussab says, "but after a while I understood the game. I don't do
anything without letting them know and I tell them that if they want to use
one of my tunnels for something then they can do it for free."

According to Abu Mussab, there is a complex relationship between smugglers,
suppliers and Egyptian and Israeli intelligence services. "We are completely
dependent on our Egyptian sources, and they have a certain amount of space
they are allowed to play in. An RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) is the
maximum weapon that they can get away with selling us, because they aren't
really much use against a tank any more. If you ask the Egyptians for modern
anti-tank or anti-aircraft missiles, they'll say 'No way'."