UN-Truth

On Friday, on the southern border of Gaza, not far from the Mediterranean coast, young men are dumping wheelbarrows full of reddish-brown sand onto makeshift new dunes on the edges of what just happens to be the well-defined district of the famous smuggling tunnels.

We are on the Gaza side of Rafah,

The sand is coming up from deep underground, in sturdy bright blue-plastic containers lifted by pulleys. At one tunnel excavation site, two young men were at the surface, around the a rounded tunnel hole about a meter in diameter. There was absolutely no barrier, nothing, to prevent anyone from slipping and falling into the hole that went down farther than the eye could see. The two men at the surface said there were six men working underground, cleaning out a tunnel that had been damaged in an earlier Israeli airstrike. Three middle-aged men were seated in a tent structure where guns are visible inside, erected just next to the tunnel hole. They stood up and craned their necks to see who was visiting, then turned away and went back to whatever it is they were doing.

The scene is astounding. The tunnel district is compact, well-defined grid, with allocated plots on each of which are structures covered with plastic sheeting, like booths at a Christmas fair, or the campsite of the performers of a circus. There are no visitors other than us. A double tanker truck are being filled with gasoline, and one is waiting, while the smell of fuel is in the air. Two boys are selling red and white packs of Marlboro cigarettes from a basket. What do you want, they ask? Is there Coca Cola, we ask? Later, they answer. Live sheep came through the tunnels earlier in the day in another area nearby. An ice cream seller (the product is in a cooler covered with towels, and the sugar cones are stacked neatly beside) goes up and down the grid, between the rows of tunnel holes.

And, it is terrifying. At any moment, an Israeli airstrike could hit. There is no effort at all to hide this highly-dangerous activity, and the growing piles of sand around the perimeter of the tunnel district are a dead give-away.

Another nightmare scenario is that the ground could collapse right under our feet. There are so many tunnels being dug, so close together. The earth is not solid anymore, here.

UPDATE: In fact, I’ve just learned that YNet has reported that: “Israeli aircraft on Friday launched two separate strikes on smuggling tunnels situated along Gaza’s border with Egypt. The army said direct hits were identified. A Palestinian health official said one person was slightly injured in one of the strikes. The strikes came shortly after a Qassam rocket fired by Palestinians from north Gaza Thursday evening hit near a kibbutz in the Negev region, without causing injury or damage. A few hours prior to that attack IDF forces apprehended a number of Palestinians who allegedly approached the security fence in south Gaza … On Thursday Palestinian sources said two people were killed when a smuggling tunnel collapsed. Three other smugglers were reported missing”.
Ali Waked and Reuters contributed to the report, which was published here.

Back on the ground in Rafah, a little further along, one tunnel digger looks up from his work and quietly greets us. He says that tunnels are being dug every 20 to 50 meters. He was in his early twenties, with wavy chopped black hair soaked wet with perspiration, amber eyes, a tan skin, and completely rotted front teeth. He was barefoot, and his left foot looked distorted — there was a large bunion at the joint next to his big toe, of the kind that women get from wearing too-high heels for too long. His might have been from wearing poorly-fitted shoes, or maybe the result of an old injury.

The opening of this tunnel was about one meter square, and this one was lined with wooden planks down as far as the eye could see, and even farther. About 15 meters down there was an emergency light hanging on the side that appeared to be daylight — but the tunnel continued down into the dark.

A more wiry and wired-up colleague scurried down from a nearby improvised shower-and-changing room, wearing jeans and a salmon-colored sweatshirt reading “Play Ball, Have Fun”. He was curious to see us, and eager to show how they worked. Clenching between his teeth the cigarette he was smoking, he hopped on a suspended swing-like seat — a wooden slat held by two neon-green ropes knotted through holes drilled at either end of the wood, then meeting in a Y which was suspended by a rubber-coated cable, operated by an improvised off-on switch.

Two others — of immediate African ancestry — joined us by the side of the tunnel hole, while another, with straight chestnut-colored hair, came out of the toilet next to the shower-and-changing room, and disappeared in another direction.

The first man operated the device to lower the seat. The second man descended and disappeared from sight, then came back up a couple of minutes later. Back on the surface, he passed me his mobile phone (after apparently making a call), to let me hear the music that was playing in the tunnel.

Egypt is letting everything — or almost everything — through the tunnels now, Gazans say. There is fuel available. The quality of some of the Egyptian-made goods, such as shoes, is not as good as what was on sale in Gaza before, which came from Israel, Europe, or Hebron, Gazans say. The Egyptian dresses are colorful and exuberant — including engagement and wedding dresses worth a couple of thousands of dollars.

The tunnel district is very close to the Philadelphi Road, which the IDF used to patrol — and which it did again in January, during its 22-day Operation Cast Lead. On the lawn in between, a Hamas soldier in camouflague was lounging on what looked to be a four-poster twin bed frame. He jumped up to greet other soldiers passing on a motorcycle.

The Egyptians have built their own version of The Wall just a short distance south and parallel to the Philadelphi Road. It is new, and went up over the past ten months, according to two Palestinian Authority/Hamas soldiers.

UPDATE: On Saturday – just a few hours later — the Israeli Air Force (IAF) launched two more waves of strikes at a total of either five or six tunnels in exactly this neighborhood. I wonder how they picked which tunnel they hit? In any case, this was said to be in retaliation for the firing of two Qassams and a couple of mortars from Gaza that landed in open fields without causing any casualties or damage in Israeli territory around Gaza’s perimeter. At least two tunnel workers were reported killed by the IAF strike.

UPDATE: On Sunday, the Jerusalem Post reported here that a London-based “pan-Arab” newspaper said that “Egyptian security forces have recently increased their presence in the town of Rafah on the Gaza border, setting up checkpoints and roadblocks in an effort to rein in smuggling into the Strip, the London-based A-sharq Al-Awsat reported Sunday. According to the report, approximately 500 policemen have been deployed in the city, and on dirt tracks and side roads leading to the border”.

If this report is true, and if it means that 500 additional Egyptian policement have been deployed in Rafah, that must mean that Israel has finally agreed to raise the ceiling that until now permitted only 750 lightly-armed border-type police forces in the entire Sinai Peninsula, a stipulation of the Egyptian-Israel Peace Treaty negotiated between Egypt’s then-President Anwar Sadat and Israel’s then-Prime Minister Menahem Begin by U.S. President Jimmy Carter at Camp David in 1979.

Filed under: Gaza, Human Rights, Humanitarian Aid, International Humanitarian Law, International Law, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians, Sanctions, UN Security Council