Gaza Tunnel Trade Squeezed By Egypt ‘Crackdown’

In the gently rolling dunes around the town of Rafah in southern Gaza, Sagah slopes around with his donkey looking like man with time on his hands.

Fine white dust clings to the sweat on his arms under a hot midday sun. He’s glum.

“For the last two weeks there has been no work. I am a poor man. I have no money,” he shouts, clapping his hands together in exasperation.

Sagah’s trade is smuggling. He is one of thousands of tunnel workers who have made a living ferrying goods from Egypt into Gaza.

The tunnel industry may be underground but there is nothing secret about it. It is completely out in the open.

There are thought to be more than 1,000 tunnels stretching along the border, most of them covered by shabby white tents

Sinai attack

The last time I visited Rafah six months ago, the area resembled a vast industrial zone humming with trucks and diggers winding there way around the huge piles of sandy soil that have popped up like massive mole hills.

Today Rafah has more of a sleepy feel.

Sagah says that since the violence that broke out in the Sinai two weeks ago, work has dried up.

He blames the Egyptian government for, at least temporarily, cracking down on the tunnel industry.

It was 5 August when 16 Egyptian policemen were killed in an attack by militants in the Sinai peninsula close to Egypt’s border with Israel and Gaza.

Egypt and Israel blamed Islamic extremists and suggested some of them might have come through the tunnels from Gaza.

Egypt’s army launched a counter-offensive killing a number of militants in the Sinai.

But the other response of the new Egyptian government was to threaten to shut down the huge network of smuggling tunnels that cross into the Palestinian territory.

At least to some extent, it seems that has happened although it is not clear how many – if any – tunnels have actually been destroyed.

Black economy

So how dependent on the tunnel economy is Gaza?

Gaza’s economy has long-relied on smuggling, since Israel and Egypt tightened a blockade on the strip in 2007, soon after the Islamist movement Hamas came to power here.

But in the last few years the tunnel trade has changed.

Three years ago shops and markets in Gaza were full of smuggled Egyptian goods, food, fridges, flat screen TVs – just about everything.

But in 2010, in response to international pressure, Israel eased its blockade allowing in many more food products and consumer goods.

It came after a nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists were killed in clashes with Israeli commados who intercepted a flotilla of ships trying to break the blockade.

Now when you visit a supermarket in Gaza nearly all the products are Israeli.

Despite the long-running conflict with Israel, Palestinians in Gaza nearly always tell you they prefer Israeli goods to Egyptian. They think they are better quality.

Initially the tunnel trade from Egypt suffered. But it has adapted and remains big business.

“The trade volume between Gaza and Egypt through the tunnels is up to $700m a year,” says Omar Shabban, an economist with the Gaza-based think tank Palthink.

Mr Shabban says more than 10,000 people are employed working in the tunnels. He says what he calls a “black economy” has created a handful of millionaires some with close ties to Hamas.

“There are over 1,200 tunnels, they smuggle cars and vehicles, they smuggle more than 500,000 litres of fuel every day, more than 300,000 packets of cigarettes every day – its huge.”

The tunnels are also used to transport people without the necessary papers to cross above ground.

Israel says weapons are also smuggled into Gaza.

But Mr Shabban says that by far the biggest area of trade is in construction materials.

“The construction sector in Gaza is almost 100% dependent on the tunnels.”

BBC