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Tunnel Vision Keeps Gaza Goods Flowing
[The Age-Australia] Ed O'Loughlin - Life is pretty good right now for Gaza's professional tunnel smugglers. The blockade means that all but basic foodstuffs are frequently scarce or unavailable, pushing up demand for the smugglers' wares. In Rafah, large plastic tents have sprouted up along the border with Egypt, amid the rubble of houses bulldozed 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 IDF drones. Abu Mussab, 38, one of Rafah's biggest commercial smugglers, said, "Last week I smuggled 100 rifles in. They cost me $700 each and when I sold them here I could only get $500 for them," he said. "Now there is no internal fighting and Hamas controls everything. Nobody wants weapons any more." According to Abu Mussab, "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.'"