- 7 juli 2009
Tunnels Zone. Rafah-Gaza
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQeGekkfcUI
They were one of Israel's key targets during its three-week assault on Gaza. But the relentless air strikes failed to destroy the hundreds of tunnels running under the border to Egypt. Rory McCarthy goes underground to watch the everyday smuggling of boxes of women's underwear, car parts and even goats.
Barely a few paces from the Egyptian border stands a large white tent, fashioned from plastic sheeting and pockmarked with jagged shrapnel holes. Inside, as in the hundreds of identical tents dotted to the left and right, is a scene of energy and illicit industriousness: a dozen Palestinian smugglers sweating to overcome the punitive economic blockade on Gaza. A stone's throw away on the opposite side of the border is an Egyptian police post, with relaxed uniformed officers standing on the roof. They gaze down without a hint of concern.
One unanswered question of Israel's three-week war in Gaza is why the air strikes, artillery shells, tank fire, bulldozing and detonations that caused such devastation and loss of life across the territory did so little damage to the hundreds of smuggling tunnels under Gaza's southern border with Egypt. Those tunnels, which bring in food, clothes, machinery as well as weapons and ammunition, were supposed to be one of Israel's key targets. On the final day of the conflict alone, the Israeli military said it had hit 100 tunnels. Gazans in the border town of Rafah spoke of night after night of enormous air strikes that shook cracks into the walls of their houses and shattered their windows.
But while the sandy border is marked with many large craters, the damage caused to the tunnels was, in many cases, repaired within days. Already some are operating again and new tunnels are being dug under the close eye of Hamas officials, who walk from one tent to the next clutching their walkie-talkies.
The smugglers believe their tunnels were simply too deep to be badly damaged, even by the heavy 500lb or one-tonne bombs dropped by Israeli F-16s. In most cases, the serious damage was only to the entrances to the tunnels, which were soon uncovered again by the Palestinians using bulldozers and then rebuilt. It may be that the focus of the Israeli attacks was on the weapons tunnels, which are closely guarded by Hamas and other armed groups and not open to public view.
Inside the large white tent is a wooden coat rack from which hang the jackets and spare clothes of a dozen men or more. To the right is an electrical circuit board with five sockets. From the back, the wires run out of the tent, across the sand dunes and directly into the public electricity supply of the municipality of Rafah. From the front, a cord runs out to power a winch. Outside, a large black plastic water butt with a tap provides the thirsty workers with fresh drinking water - again, courtesy of the municipality. All of this is registered and paid for. Smuggling in Gaza is a semi-official business.
The focus of activity is the tunnel's well: a 15m deep shaft lined on its four sides by planks of wood. Three metal beams are positioned pyramid-shape over the well and support the electric winch, whose cable runs down the shaft to the sandy floor below. There, two men crouch low and operate two more winches that run horizontally 300m to the south along the tunnel, stretching out of Gaza and into Egypt. One of the winches draws in the goods from the Egyptian side, a train of boxes and sacks sliding over the sand on plastic containers. The second winch sends back the empty containers for reloading.
It took about eight weeks to dig this tunnel; a team of men worked long days underground using a pneumatic drill to dig out the soil, which they then carried out in large, plastic containers and dumped nearby. By the time it was finished, the tunnel was tall enough for a man to stand with his head bowed, and nearly a metre wide along its full length. The tunnel walls are bare soil with regular wooden supports to prevent collapse - although it still remains a dangerous business. Around 40 Palestinian tunnellers were killed last year in cave-ins.
It is midday and the work is constant. Every 30 seconds one of the men below shouts "Raise" and a man sitting over the mouth of the well switches on the winch and pulls up another sack. So far this morning, they have contained: dry, yellow chickenfeed; spare parts for cars; a box of coat hooks; microwaves; kerosene cookers; packets of rather dowdy women's underwear; and now several large, 5.5kW generators.
Notably absent are drugs and alcohol, which are forbidden by Hamas; cigarettes, which are heavily taxed by Hamas; and anything even resembling weaponry or military material, which come in through more discreet tunnels far from the public eye that may or may not have been more seriously damaged by the war.
"Without these tunnels, everything would stop in Gaza," says one of the workers, who gave his name only as Abu Zeid, 22. "And they say we are terrorists. Where are the terrorists here? The world knows very well what's going on, but they don't want us to live. If they opened the crossings, why would we need to do this business?"
Since Israel pulled its soldiers and settlers out of Gaza in mid-2005, it has imposed an ever-tighter economic blockade on what it calls the "hostile entity". For the past year and a half, that has meant closures of the crossings: banning all exports and prohibiting all imports, save for a limited list of humanitarian goods. Even the UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon called it "collective punishment" - illegal under international law. It has left more than 80% of Gazans reliant on aid.
The policy was designed to weaken Hamas and convince the Palestinians they had made a mistake when, in 2006 - in what was widely acknowledged as one of the most free and fair elections in the Arab world - they voted in strength for the Islamists. Egypt has also kept its border crossing at Rafah largely closed. "It's politics, dirty politics," says Abu Zeid.
Most of the workers in this tunnel were once employed as daily labourers within Israel, but Palestinians have long been refused such jobs. Now in Gaza there is barely any work available. Some at this tunnel are former policemen once employed by Hamas's bitter rival, Fatah; others are farmers whose livelihoods collapsed with the ban on exports. "There is nothing for us except the tunnels," says another worker.
"I have a house, and land and money but I want to go abroad," says Abu Eyash, 28, a tunneller who once spent four years in an Israeli jail for his connections with Fatah. "I'm not satisfied here. There's always war and never any security."
These men may not earn much from the tunnels, but others do. The tunnel cost around £100,000 to build and the owners say they earned that back within the first two months. The original owners of the land are given a 10% commission and Egyptian security officials on the other side earn healthy bribes. As his staff worked, one of the owners took out a thick fold of dollar bills, from which he was to send the equivalent of £13,000 to the Egyptians, enough to provide protection for the tunnel for around 10 days until the next payment was due.
In the last two weeks since the end of its war in Gaza, Israel has launched several more air strikes against the tunnels after militants from small, non-Hamas groups fired rockets and mortars into southern Israel. This tunnel was one of those hit, although the workers said the damage would take only a few days to repair.
Not everyone celebrates the tunnel industry. A short walk back from this tent is the home of Mohammad Abu Saud, 40, who is spending the day covering his broken windows with plastic sheeting and wondering how he is ever going to repair the massive cracks in his walls caused by the bombing of the tunnels. "I don't earn any benefit from the tunnels and I'm suffering because of them - you can see the cracks here and the windows gone, as well as the fact that the prices in the market have risen a lot," he says.
"I think the tunnels are delaying a solution," says his brother Ala'a, 35. "If there were no tunnels, there would be such a heavy price that it would force Hamas to sit and find a solution and the only solution is to reopen the crossings. I'm not even asking them to liberate Palestine, just open the crossings."
Around half an hour's drive north from the border are the recently destroyed remains of what, a month ago, was one of the largest food-processing factory compounds in the Gaza strip, owned by the wealthy al-Wadeya brothers. Yaser al-Wadeya has a PhD in industrial engineering from Cleveland State University and little sympathy for Hamas. He estimates the damage caused by the Israeli military to his biscuit, ice-cream, snacks and dessert factories is worth around £15m. Even if he had the money for repairs, Israel's restrictions mean he would not be able to import new machinery.
Even before the war, Al-Wadeya directed some of his Israeli suppliers to give up waiting for the Israeli crossings to open and ship their products to Egypt, then for them to be smuggled under the border into Gaza. "The main reason for all of this is to destroy the economic infrastructure of the weak Palestinian economy," he says. "They want to make sure that we will never have a state in Palestine."
Israel's military said it was conducting "post-operation investigations" into accounts of civilian casualties and property damage, but added that it "does not target civilians or civilian infrastructure, including factories, unless it is being used by the Hamas for terrorist purposes".
However, Palestinians, including al-Wadeya, disagree and argue that much of the bombing during this war was aimed directly at civilian infrastructure. Among the other targets hit were the largest cement factory in Gaza, the largest flour mill, the only parliament building, a major sewage project and the leading private school, not to mention the 21,000 homes and more than 200 factories completely or partially destroyed.
Al-Wadeya argues that Israel has allowed the commercial tunnel economy to function as part of a broader campaign to break Gaza's economic and political links with Israel and to force it towards a dependent relationship with Egypt. "During the occupation, from the beginning until now, our whole relationship is with Israel. You can't just break it and move towards Egypt," he says.
Some senior Israelis have spoken publicly in recent years of their desire to hand over responsibility for Gaza to Egypt, and to keep most of the Jewish settlements on the occupied West Bank while handing the remaining Palestinian cantons over to Jordanian control. Ironically, Hamas, with its insistence on opening the Rafah crossing with Egypt to give access to the rest of the Islamic world, appears at times to be pushing for the same future for Gaza.
The Islamists appear not to have grasped the full extent of the devastation suffered in Gaza, or the people's frustration. Shortly after the war, a Hamas official arrived at the rubble of the factory and offered £3,500 towards its repair. "I told him to get the hell out of here," says Al-Wadeya. "What would that buy? Not even new locks for the doors.
"I really believe that if we stay where we are with Hamas and Fatah and this political issue, we will never do anything in Gaza. It will become like Somalia or Sudan," he says. "We need two peaceful states, Palestine and Israel, living together. Without this we will be at war for the next century."
Going underground: a history of wartime tunnel systems
Afghanistan Tora Bora
Financed by the CIA and created by the mujahideen during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the Tora Bora complex contains miles of tunnels, bunkers and fortified caves. Close to the White Mountain range near the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, the complex is where Osama bin Laden is believed to have hidden with 1,000 Taliban fighters. The caves and passages apparently have ventilation and power systems running on electric generators.
Gibraltar The galleries
Inside the Rock of Gibraltar is a honeycomb of tunnels known as the galleries. The first passages were built during the great siege in 1779-1783, when Spanish troops attacked the Rock. Soldiers from the garrison dug through the stone to a promontory on the north face, which allowed them to fire on the Spanish below. In total, 304m of halls, passages and openings were created. More tunnels were added during the second world war when the British feared Gibraltar would be attacked. The tunnel system was expanded and the rock became a keystone in the defence of shipping routes to the Mediterranean.
Bosnia Sarajevo tunnel
In 1993, citizens in Sarajevo began constructing a 1.5m high, 800m long underground passage. Their city was under siege from Serbian forces and the tunnel led to the UN-designated neutral area of Sarajevo airport. Bosnian volunteers worked in eight-hour shifts using picks and shovels to create a way for food, aid and weapons to come into the city, and people to escape. The tunnel was most famously used to transport the former Bosnian president Alija Izetbegovic in his wheelchair out of the city.
Vietnam Cu Chi and Vinh Moc tunnels
During the Vietnam war American soldiers came up against the Viet Cong's Cu Chi tunnels. This huge system of underground passages stretched from the Cambodian border in the west to the outskirts of Saigon, running below the jungles of Vietnam. Used to mount surprise attacks against US troops, the tiny tunnels led to subterranean rooms, some of which were big enough to be used as hospitals, arms stores and even theatres. The first passages were built during the 1948 war of independence with France to link villages. Later, the Viet Cong painstakingly expanded them by hand until they covered 250km. To attack the tunnels, the US created a volunteer force made up of soldiers small enough to fit down the passages. After negotiating hidden traps of sharpened bamboo spikes, they had to fight their enemy in the tunnels. The complex has now become a war memorial park.
Under the former demilitarised zone that ran between the communist north and capitalist south, lie the Vinh Moc tunnels. They were built to shelter people from the intense bombing of the area and included wells, kitchens, rooms for each family and spaces for healthcare. Around 60 families lived in them - and as many as 17 children were born inside.
Jersey War tunnels
Created during the German occupation of the island in the second world war, these tunnels were built by more than 5,000 slave labourers brought to Jersey. Many of the Russians, Poles, Frenchmen and Spaniards died of malnutrition or disease. Originally constructed as an ammunition store and artillery barracks, the tunnels were later converted to a casualty clearing station as D-Day drew nearer.
Poland Stalag Luft III
Immortalised in the film the Great Escape, Tom, Dick and Harry were the tunnels created by the prisoners of the Stalag Luft III camp in Poland. Work on the tunnels began in 1942 and during the night of March 24, 1944, 76 inmates managed to escape down a 101m tunnel. All but three of the men were recaptured; the Gestapo shot 50 and returned the remainder to captivity.
France Catacombs
Organised in a section of Paris's vast network of subterranean tunnels, the catacombs were a tourist attraction in the early 19th century. This cemetery covers a portion of Paris' former mines near the Left Bank's Place Denfert-Rochereau. During the second world war, both Parisian members of the French resistance and German soldiers used the tunnels.
Homa Khaleeli
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/10/gaza-tunnels-israel - 17 jan 2010
Uncomfortably Numb
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPgjoVP3HeM
The underground tunnels between Egypt and Gaza are a lifeline for those trapped inside the blockaded Strip, but along with the clothes, furniture and food that make their way through the tunnels, a dangerous drug - Tramadol - is also entering the territory. Tramal, as it is known in Gaza, is a dangerously addictive painkiller which is illegal without a prescription, but an increasing number of Gazans are becoming hooked on it.
Uncomfortably Numb talks to some of those addicts, those who are trying to help them and the authorities seeking to crack down on drug abuse. - 23 aug 2010
Strangling Gaza
Gazan woman in rubble of her home.
The United Nations and the World Food Programme released on Friday a study of Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip. A condemnation of Israel’s conduct, it describes a burgeoning catastrophe mutating dangerously and mercilessly.
“This regime has exacerbated the assault on human dignity triggered by the blockade imposed by Israel since June 2007,” stated the report titled Between the Fence and a Hard Place.
Under Israel’s thumb, the occupation is ruining Gaza’s land, sea, and mental and physical health.
Because of the siege, more adults are depressed, more children are wetting their beds and earning worse grades. Nutrition is deteriorating. Disenfranchised breadwinners are increasingly beating their partners.
West Bank Deputy Secotr Lead Antoine Renard described the rules of the blockade: “No movement of people, they are very restricted on what can be imported, and there’s practically a total ban on exports.”
Debt plagues families, children can’t go to school, and farms degenerate. The blockade and occupation has cost Gazans $308 million in property, $50.2 million in agriculture profit, and $26.5 million in fish harvest.
“The private sector is moribund,” Renard said. Before the blockade, Gaza exported lucrative cash-crops like strawberries and flowers - now domestic farming is their only option. “As long as you cannot have raw material in Gaza because of the blockade, the economy cannot pick up.”
1994’s Oslo Agreements allotted Gaza 20 nautical miles of maritime rights into the Mediterranean, but today 85 percent of these productive waters are cut-off by Israeli gunships. Fisherman are shot, flotillas are boarded and ships are confiscated if they breach the illegally cordoned security zone. Traders risk death and injury sneaking past Israeli and Egyptian navies to buy fish. Others smuggle goods through tunnels.
“The current restrictions of civilian access to Gaza’s land and sea must be urgently lifted to the fullest extent possible,” stated the report, calling on full withdrawal of troops, an enduring ceasefire, and cooperation with humanitarian aid as demanded by UN Security Council Resolution 1860.
Starvation and bullets symbolize the current problem - but long-term threats lurk. The Gazan coastal aquifer, fed by the Hebron river meandering west across Beersheba to the coast, is in danger of irrevocable contamination. Through the Joint Water Commission and Civil Administration, Israel has blocked necessary waste water treatment facilities, and every year 80 million liters of foul water runs over Gaza towards the sea, trailing pollution.
The Green Line enclosing Gaza is now a barren scar of land. Expanded by an Israeli-enforced security zone up to 1,500 meters wide, the fence has cut into 17 percent of Gaza’s total landmass and 35 percent of it’s farming land. Made up of “high risk” and “no-go” areas, this land is razed by Israeli patrols more than three times a week. Such forces typically are “between four to ten military vehicles (tanks, bulldozers, military jeeps), frequently accompanied by helicopters, drones and heavy bursts of fire.”
Two satellite photographs of Beit Hanoun, comparing fertile 2005 and a desolate 2008, is evidence of this environmental devastation.
Israel clears out these fields as preemptive and reprisal attacks against civilians. If violent factions within Gaza attack Israel forces from civilian land, it is destroyed. This is collective punishment, Renard said.
“Civilians should not be targeted in these areas,” Renard said. “You’re not as a civilian responsible for it.”
Neighborhood in Gaza.
For Gaza’s 1.5 million residents, Israel’s 2005 disengagement meant an intensification of suffering.
Since then, Israel has destroyed 18,000 dunums of olive, almond, citrus and grapes fields, 5,800 dunums of lucrative greenhouses, more than 300 water wells, six factories, 197 chicken farms, 377 sheep farms, 996 homes, three mosques, and three schools.
In Gaza, the disengagement meant a shift from troops to hardware and hi-tech weaponry like drones, brutal flechette bombs and remote-controlled turrets. Operating these machine-guns, an all-female cadre of Israeli soldiers track and attack targets in a distant bunker, watching relays of satellite images, ground sensors, and aircraft manned and unmanned. Using joysticks and buttons, one soldier compared the system to a Sony Playstation.
The report is a dreadful documentation of atrocity. The army besieges a land, poisons the water, targets fishers and farmers, and deploys the latest weapons of war, watching it live via satellite.
Israel still grasps Gaza’s throat.
http://palestinemonitor.org/spip/spip.php?article1524...Read more 23 jan 2012, 19:44 , Respect -
Maria 23 aug 2010
Egypt seizes 3 smuggling tunnels
EL-ARISH, Egypt (Ma'an) -- Egyptian forces took control of three smuggling tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt border and confiscated goods prepared for transfer into the Strip on Sunday, a security source told Ma'an.
The source said Egyptian forces were carrying out a tunnel reconnaissance campaign in the Ad-Dehnia area south of the Rafah crossing, seizing a tunnel used to smuggle cars. The source added that this was the 13th tunnel used for car smuggling discovered by Egyptian forces in since July.
Forces discovered two further tunnels in the As-Sarsourya border area north of Rafah, confiscating goods found at the site, including clothes for Eid celebrations to mark the end of Ramadan, electrical appliances and car parts. Forces loaded the goods onto 10 trucks, transferring them to government warehouses in preparation for auction, the source said.
Egyptian authorities are preparing to detonate the tunnels. Over 550 tunnels have been discovered by Egyptian forces since the beginning of 2010.
Gaza residents used the tunnel complex to transfer goods, construction material and food into the Strip since Israel imposed its blockade in 2006. In response, Egypt began construction of an underground steel wall built to thwart smuggling efforts, which is scheduled for completion by the end of 2010.
Reports suggest that the tunnel industry is becoming less lucrative, as Israel began allowing certain previously-barred goods into the coastal enclave. The move followed international pressure to ease its blockade of the Strip after Israel's deadly 31 May raid of Gaza-bound aid fleet, which killed nine passengers.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=310010 23 jan 2012, 19:45 , Respect -
Maria 28 aug 2010
Egypt destroys 12 smuggling tunnels on border with Gaza
Israel has eased its embargo on the territory, but trade is still restricted, maintaining a demand for the tunnels.
Egypt destroyed 12 smuggling tunnels leading into the Gaza Strip, security sources said Saturday. The tunnels were found at various points along the Sinai Peninsula's small border with Gaza.
The sources said the soldiers involved in blowing up the tunnels maintained contact with officials on the Gazan side of the border, to ensure that no people were underground during the process.
Following the deaths of nine Turkish activists in late May who were part of a flotilla aimed at breaking the blockade on the coastal territory, Israel and Egypt have slightly relaxed the embargoed goods into Gaza.
Israel now lets in more food items and some construction materials, but the building supplies are only for the United Nations, leaving regular Gazans dependent on the tunnels for numerous items.
The blockade on Gaza was tightened after the Islamist Hamas movement took control of the territory in 2007. Since then all exports have also been banned and this has yet to be lifted.
Egypt has kept its border crossing at Rafah open since June, the longest period in the history of the blockade, to allow Palestinians with the appropriate paperwork to cross back and forth, though many say they are still denied movement.
http://fwd4.me/0kMd 23 jan 2012, 19:45 , Respect -
Maria 28 aug 2010
Egypt police seize missiles, ammunition bound for Gaza
Palestinian news agency Ma'an reports that Egypt police raided several secret weapons depots in Sinai, discovered 190 fully assembled anti-aircraft missiles.
Egyptian police on Saturday raided several arms depots in Sinai, believed to hold weapons meant for smuggling into Gaza, the Palestinian news agency Ma'an reported.
According to the report, the Egyptian police uncovered secret caches of explosives in a desert in the center of the Sinai peninsula. The caches held 190 fully assembled anti-aircraft missiles and rockets in addition to explosives and ammunition.
One cache containing 100 anti-aircraft shells was uncovered in Al-Hasana, and another, containing 90 of the shells, was discovered in Ad-Daqqaq. A third cache, holding 1,500 bullets of various sizes, was found in Nakhl, Ma'an reported.
The news agency added that several additional secret depots were raided in the city of Rafah, some 3 kilometers from the border with Gaza, where ten anti-tank mines were seized.
Drugs were also seized in the raids. 50 kilograms of hashish were taken, and several suspected drug dealers detained.
http://fwd4.me/0kMe 23 jan 2012, 19:45 , Respect -
Maria 29 aug 2010
Egypt police find more weapons along Gaza border
EL ARISH, Egypt (Ma'an) -- Police in the Sinai Peninsula uncovered five caches of weapons destined for Gaza and detained three suspects near its border, security sources said Sunday.
A day earlier, security sources reported that six weapons depots were found in the Sinai.
The sources said a store holding 100 kilograms of TNT explosives was discovered in El-Arish, near the border with Gaza. Automatic rifles and ammunition were uncovered in a depot in the border town of Rafah, and in central Sinai, three caches holding 170 anti-aircraft missiles and 50 anti-aircraft bullets were found.
Security officials say smugglers could extract large amounts of TNT from anti-aircraft missiles. They said the weapons were to be smuggled into Gaza through the tunnel network.
Three men accused of smuggling weapons into Gaza were detained from Sheikh Zuwayid, a city near Gaza's southern border, the sources added.
Police shut down 5 more tunnels
Meanwhile, Egyptian security forces took over five tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt border area.
The tunnel entrance points were discovered inside farms and homes along the Salah Ad-Din border area in Rafah. Egyptian forces stormed the area finding one 1.5 meters in diameter and six meters underground.
Four other tunnels were found in a farm 150 meters from the border. No goods were seized during that raid.
The raids came a day after Egyptian police raided arms depots in the Sinai peninsula, which held weapons ready to be smuggled into Gaza. Security sources said three weapons depots were discovered in those raids.
An Egyptian security source said Sunday that smuggling activity has recently increased, after smugglers successfully cut through parts of Egypt's steel underground wall, which was built to thwart weapons.
In July, an Egyptian official said there were hundreds of holes in the barrier, equal to the number of active tunnels. Egypt denied the report at the time, saying that the wall would be finished by the end of year.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=311710 23 jan 2012, 19:45 , Respect -
Maria 6 sept 2010
Palestinian dies in tunnel accident
GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- A young Palestinian man died Monday in a tunnel accident in the southern Gaza Strip, officials said.
Ahmad Al-Astal, 25, was injured by an electric shock while working near the Salah Ad-Din Gate under Rafah, medics said.
A Gaza medical services spokesman said As-Astal was pronounced dead on arrival at the Yousef An-Najjar Hospital.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=313480 23 jan 2012, 19:46 , Respect -
Maria 16 sept 2010
Egyptian police: Bombed tunnel for sugar transport
AL-ARISH, Egypt (Ma'an) -- Egyptian authorities said officers seized three smuggling tunnels on the Gaza-Egypt border on Thursday morning, in addition to several tons of sugar prepared for transport into the coastal enclave.
One of the three tunnels seized, Egyptian sources added, was bombed a day earlier by the Israeli airforce. The tunnel emerged in Egypt's As-Sarsourya area in Rafah.
On Wednesday, Israeli airstrikes hit two tunnels in the southern Gaza Strip. A statement from the Israeli military said the strike targeted a tunnel on the Philadelphi corridor on the Egypt-Gaza border, and added that it was a "Hamas operated tunnel ... used to smuggle terrorists into the Gaza Strip so that they could execute attacks against Israeli civilians."
Two other tunnels were seized by Egyptian officials, sources said, both located in the Salah Ad-Din area. No goods or smugglers were found during the raids, police noted.
A report from Egyptian security said that so far, 550 smuggling tunnels had been shut down, noting that 15 of them had been dug for the transport of cars into Gaza.
On Thursday, Israeli officials informed Palestinian crossing liaison officers that an earlier decision to allow cars to enter the Gaza Strip had been reversed.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=315396 23 jan 2012, 19:46 , Respect -
Maria 17 sept 2010
12 rescued from Gaza tunnels
GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- Medics reported that 12 injured workers were rescued Friday from two tunnels under Gaza's border with Egypt.
Civil defense crews evacuated six workers after they reported being suffocated by gas in an underground tunnel near the Salah Ad-Din gate south of Rafah. The six men were transferred to the Abu Yousif An-Najjar Hospital in Rafah for treatment.
A seventh man who remained trapped in the tunnel was rescued on Friday afternoon, and during the rescue two others were found in the underground terminal, bringing the total number of casualties from the incident to 10.
Three trapped workers were also rescued from a second tunnel which had collapsed in the Al-Brazil neighborhood on Friday morning.
Egyptian police continue a campaign to close the tunnels, occasionally detonating the Egyptian side of the passageways. Unconfirmed reports that officers pump poisonous gasses into the areas have also surfaced.
Israeli airstrikes on Wednesday and Thursday have also weakened the structures of the tunnels, workers said.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=315702 23 jan 2012, 19:46 , Respect -
Maria 17 sept 2010
10 injured in Gaza tunnels
GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- Ten Gaza residents were injured in two tunnels accidents on Friday morning, medics said, with one man still missing beneath the Gaza-Egypt border.
Military medical services spokesman Adham Abu Salmya said Civil Defense crews were able to evacuate six tunnel workers from one passageway after they reported being incapacitated by a noxious gas present in the underground terminal.
A seventh man remains inside the tunnel, which officials said was located near the Salah Ad-Din gate south of Rafah. The six rescued workers were transferred to the Abu Yousif An-Najjar Hospital in Rafah for treatment.
A second tunnel in the Al-Brazil neighborhood collapsed Friday morning, with at least three trapped inside. Workers said efforts to remove the men were ongoing.
It was not immediately clear whether the two incidents were related.
Egyptian police continue a campaign to close the tunnels, occasionally detonating the Egyptian side of the passageways. Unconfirmed reports that officers pump poisonous gasses into the areas have also surfaced.
Israeli airstrikes on Wednesday and Thursday have also weakened the structures of the tunnels, workers said.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=315674 23 jan 2012, 19:46 , Respect -
Maria 21 sept 2010
160 killed in Gaza tunnels: Rights groups
Palestinians stand around the bodies of two young men killed during an Israeli air raid on Rafah tunnels along the border with Egypt, September 5, 2010.
Human rights groups say 160 Palestinians have died digging cross-border tunnels between the city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip and Egypt.
Falling standards of living and unprecedented levels of unemployment together with unrelenting poverty have led many young Gazans to risk their lives in tunnels to make a living.
Some of the victims were killed during Israeli bombardments of the tunnels, while others died after inhaling poisonous fumes released inside the tunnels by Egyptian security authorities. Collapse of the tunnels accounts for the remaining mortalities.
"The siege must be lifted immediately," Samir Zaqqout from the al-Mezan Center for Human Rights told a Press TV correspondent on Monday.
"It is a war crime by all definitions and it systematically violates international humanitarian laws," he went on to say.
In June 2007, Egypt and Israel tightened the already existing blockade of the Gaza Strip, allowing only very limited humanitarian aid into the impoverished coastal sliver.
"The siege is still continuing and it is driving so many people, who would normally not do a job that is getting attacked regularly by both planes from Israel and gassing through from Egypt," said Adie Mormech from the International Solidarity Movement.
Referring to the motivation of the victims, Mormech said those working in the tunnels were mostly teenagers and young adults, trying to save up to pay for their education.
After Israel's takeover of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in international waters on May 31 and the deaths of nine civilians on the aid convoy, Tel Aviv eased the land blockade of Gaza, allowing in more consumer goods.
The naval siege of the enclave, however, remains in place, exports are banned and imports of raw and construction materials are restricted.
"We feel very sorry for the deaths of more than 160 people in the tunnels, but they served the issue of the Palestinians," said Amjad al-Shawwa of the Palestinian NGO Network.
"The main solution for Gaza's problems is to end the siege totally, meaning to open all the crossings for goods and people, and this is not just a need but the right of the Palestinians," he urged.
http://www.presstv.com/detail/143344.html 23 jan 2012, 19:46 , Respect -
Maria 28 sept 2010
Gaza's troubled tunnel trade swings into reverse
Tunnel imports plummet in Gaza after Israel eases blockade, resulting in closure of most tunnels.
Business has become so bad for Gaza's smuggler barons since Israel relaxed its blockade that tunnel traders have given up spiriting goods into the enclave, and some have even turned underground exporters.
Smugglers had made fortunes hauling all manner of goods from Egypt through tunnels into Gaza, supplying 1.5 million Palestinians badly hurt by Israel's clampdown imposed in 2007 after the Islamist Hamas group took over the tiny territory.
But in June Israel eased the blockade, originally intended to weaken Hamas and prevent its Islamist backers supplying weapons to Gaza, in response to international pressure.
Over-priced clandestine imports from Egypt lost their allure as cheaper goods brought in through Israeli border crossings became available. Many smugglers went out of business and most of the roughly 2,500 tunnels have been closed or mothballed.
But a few entrepreneurs have adapted and reversed the flow, exporting through the remaining tunnels from an enclave once starved of basic goods to Egypt, Gaza's only market.
"This business is very profitable, since there's no exporting at all through Israeli crossings," said Abu Khail, a Gaza Strip tunneller. He reckons 15 to 20 tunnels are now shipping to Egypt, each employing at least 12 workers.
"We're exporting raw materials like aluminium, copper, scrap metal, plus eggs, ducks and chickens," said one masked worker who was packing bags for the short trip underground from Rafah to Egypt, which prohibits overt commercial trade with Gaza.
While Israel's blockade failed to break Hamas's lock on Gaza, easing it has led to a collapse of unofficial tax revenues which the Islamist group earned from the tunnel trade.
For Gaza Palestinians, the smugglers' reversal of fortune is welcome. For three years they paid exorbitant prices for everything Israel forbade, which used to be a very long list and is now much reduced, allowing for an influx of legal imports.
The Israelis relaxed their grip after taking a hammering in the court of world public opinion when their commandos killed nine pro-Palestinian activists in a melee aboard a Turkish ship trying to bust the Gaza blockade on May 31
http://bit.ly/arUvd2 23 jan 2012, 19:47 , Respect -
Maria 1 oct 2010
Egypt shuts down 580th tunnel
EL-ARISH, Egypt (Ma'an) -- Egyptian security forces seized eight smuggling tunnels in the Salah Ad-Din area of Rafah on Friday, police sources said.
The state intelligence department received information regarding the operation of the tunnels, an official said, describing them as 1.5 meters wide and running six meters underground.
Operating only 12 meters away from the border area, officials said the passages were closed, adding that they did not find any goods or smuggling personnel during the raid.
Egyptian officials said guards were on heightened alert and had blocked the tunnels with stones.
Records say that as of the end of September, Egyptian police had shut down 580 smuggling tunnels, including 15 used for transporting cars.
Since Israel imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip four years ago, smugglers have brought goods into the besieged enclave from Egypt through underground tunnels.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=319837 23 jan 2012, 19:47 , Respect -
Maria 2 oct 2010
Egypt destroys four Gaza smuggling tunnels
Egypt has said it destroyed over 20 tunnels in September alone along its 11-kilometer-long border with the enclosed enclave.
Egyptian security forces have destroyed four tunnels leading across the border to the Gaza Strip, one of them large enough to smuggle cars, officials said Saturday.
The tunnels were being used to smuggle essential goods, petrol and cars into the blockaded enclave, according to authorities.
Egypt has said it destroyed over 20 tunnels in September alone along its 11-kilometre-long border with the Palestinian territory, as part of its most recent effort to clamp down on smuggling.
In addition to providing a lifeline for the 1.5 million inhabitants of the enclave, the tunnels are believed to be used to transport weapons for militants.
Israel's blockade on the Gaza Strip was tightened after Hamas took control of the territory in 2007.
The Egyptian government has faced domestic criticism for its destruction of tunnels and its partial blockade on Gaza. However, after Israel violently prevented an aid flotilla from reaching Gaza, Egypt lifted some of the restrictions at its Rafah border crossing, allowing entry to Palestinians needing medical attention, and pilgrims.
http://bit.ly/9d1DHK 23 jan 2012, 19:47 , Respect -
Maria 14 oct 2010
Gaza tunnels used to export goods
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mYncvHdyz8