[Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA:

The overwhelming majority of Israeli Arab Affairs correspondents have joined
with Israeli defense and other various officials to describe the Egyptian
wall building project as a genuine expression of a sincere commitment to
stop the smuggling of weapons and explosives to the Gaza Strip.

The alternative suggestion that this is more a matter of window dressing
combined with a considerable amount of money making (think of the many
millions of dollars being spent on the wall and the opportunity for kick
backs from the contractors) and that if Egypt actually wanted to stop the
smuggling they could achieve it by creating a sterile area on their side of
the border and enforcing restrictions/inspection on shipments coming into
the area adjacent to the sterile area barely finds itself mentioned - if at
all - in their reports.

Why is it so important for the narrative to be that Egypt is genuinely
committed to stopping the smuggling?

Could it have something to do with that these same people are withdrawal
supporters?

Is this yet another case of withdrawal supporter trying to force yet another
square peg "solution" into a round hole "problem" as they promote their
logic defying policies? ]

Robert Fisk: Gaza's defiant tunnellers head deeper underground
They are threatened with drowning by the Egyptians and punitively taxed by
Hamas. Our correspondent meets the Palestinian smugglers bringing oranges,
car batteries and bottle tops to a territory under siege
The Independent Wednesday, 10 February 2010
www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-gazas-defiant-tunnellers-head-deeper-underground-1894563.html

They are the real resistance. They are the lung through which Gaza breathes.
True, missiles must pass along their subterranean tracks, Qassam rockets,
too, Kalashnikov ammunition, explosives. But by far the greatest burden of
the tunnellers of Gaza is the very life-blood of this besieged little
pseudo-Islamic statelet: fresh meat, oranges, chocolate, shirts, trousers,
toys, cigarettes, wedding dresses, paper, entire motor-cars in four bits,
car batteries, even plastic bottle tops. The tunnellers of Gaza are bombed
by the Israelis, they die in their own collapsing tunnels - and now they
face a new Egyptian wall, even the fear of drowning. Terrorists they may be
to the Israelis - the promiscuous use of this word makes it fairly
meaningless these days - but heroes they are to the Palestinians of Gaza.
Rich ones, too, perhaps.

But right now, Abdul-Halim al-Mohsen is worried about the Egyptians. He sits
by the spitting log fire near the shaft of his tunnel, turning his hands to
the flames, breathing in the thick blue smoke, a vast white tent above him
casting his fellow-tunnellers into Rembrandt-like shadow, half-faces, thick
pullovers, bright flames amid the gloom, the generator purring in the
corner.

"Of course I'm afraid of the Egyptian wall," al-Mohsen says. "They will pour
water down. How can we defeat this? We may drown." He holds out the palms of
his hands towards me in that familiar "what-can-we-do?" gesture of so many
Palestinians - but he is speaking in a matter-of-fact voice. The tunnels
beneath the Gaza-Egyptian frontier are a business, a professional's game,
Israel's bombs a challenge rather than a problem. There's even a four-truck
miniature railway down one of the shafts. Money makes the wheels go round.

True to their treaties with Israel and the Quartet (of Lord Blair of Kut
al-Amara fame), the Egyptians announced last month that they will build a
wall - walls being the currency of the Middle East these days, from Kabul
and Baghdad to the West Bank - between the southern-most rubble of the
Palestinian Gaza Strip and Egypt, in order to break through and close down
the "terrorist" tunnels. Foreign NGOs in Gaza dismiss this as the usual
Egyptian window-dressing to please the Israelis - which means to please the
Americans - adding that the Egyptian wall will only descend 18 feet beneath
the ground, falling far short of the tunnels' depth. Perhaps it is in the
tunnellers' interest to be more pessimistic. Al-Mohsen seems genuinely
troubled by the Egyptian initiative.
"If they flood our tunnel, our dangers increase," he says. "It takes an hour
to get out of the tunnel if we are stooping or on our hands and knees. When
the Israelis are bombing, we clamber through to the Egyptian end - the
Israelis won't bomb the Egyptian side - but if the Egyptians stop us, we
will be caught by the bombing if the tunnel collapses."

I wonder about this, especially when Abu Wadieh invites us to look at the
cavernous vault which opens in the far corner of the tent. This is no dirt
hole in the ground but a solidly built stone-and-brick vertical tunnel,
almost 15 feet in width and 90 feet deep - so deep that I can scarcely see
the tiny arms of the men far below me as they heap bags of fruit on to a big
steel hook - and more than half a mile long. A hawser whisks the bags to the
surface as the generator whines and the men at the rim of the tunnel give
them a gentle push so that they swing back into their arms. These men know
their job. All profess to be uninterested in politics, of course. No weapons
pass through their tunnel. Oh no, indeed.

A truck has backed into the tent, a squad of men piling fruit and vegetables
and furniture and bottles of Egyptian Coca-Cola on to the lorry. I ask
al-Mohsen - he swears he will be a construction engineer if peace (a muffled
gasp here) looms - for his inspiration. He's seen pictures of tunnels before
and he saw a film long ago in which foreign prisoners - British - escaped
from a German camp through a tunnel. Of course. The Great Escape! Richard
Attenborough and James Garner and Steve McQueen and the truck on railway
lines which ferries them out of their Stalag. It accounts for the
professional quality of the tunnel - even for the underground railway line.
Though I don't choose to remind al-Mohsen of what happened to Attenborough.

But this is no laughing business. NGOs estimate that Hamas skims 15 per cent
of the profits off the tunnellers' turnover, giving that august
institution - excoriated by Israel, the US and Europe ever since they had
the temerity to win the 2006 Palestinian elections - a quiet $350m (£225m)
income per annum.

So while the world blockades Gaza and condemns the 1.5 million souls here to
penury and - in some cases - near-starvation, Hamas supplies itself with all
the concrete, building materials, iron and weapons that its plentiful
supplies of money can buy.

While the EU gutlessly allows Israel to deprive Palestinian civilians of
cement to rebuild their homes after last year's bloodbath in Gaza - because
Hamas might use the cement to build bunkers - Hamas itself has more than
enough cement to build a city of bunkers or a fleet of mosques, not to
mention the buildings it has erected opposite Israeli troops at Erez.

In other words, the tunnels keep Hamas in pocket and Gaza alive. The
Palestinian poor, of course, have to be fed by the United Nations. The
tunnels thus represent not just a series of blood vessels between Gaza and
Egypt, but a massive international hypocrisy.

Abu Wadieh, who employs 35 men working in and above al-Mohsen's tunnel,
stands beside the crackling fire, a kuffiah wound round his head like a
builder's helmet, rubbing his hands in the cold wind that pours into the
tent as the latest truck carries its riches off to Gaza City.

"I'm afraid the men will all leave if there's another war," he says. "But
they are experts. They know what to do."

Only 100 metres away, the yellow shaft of an Egyptian drilling machine
stands against the horizon and the very beginning of a grey wall. Behind it,
an Egyptian flag snaps above a watchtower where the soldiers of Arab Egypt
ensure that their Arab Palestinian brothers stay besieged in the rubbish pit
of Gaza.