As Truce Teeters, Gaza's Tunnelers Dig Undeterred

[Mrs. Sharon B. Hodge]

As Truce Teeters, Gaza's Tunnelers Dig Undeterred


With the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas militants on the edge of collapse, the most dangerous job in Gaza - digging tunnels into Egypt - just got a lot more dangerous. Destroying the tunnels that allowed the import of both vital food and fuel supplies denied Gazans by the Israeli blockade, but also enabled the ferrying of weapons to Hamas, was a key objective of Israel's 22-day military operation, and its aircraft and artillery pounded the sandy patch of land along the Egyptian border in the hope of collapsing them. But as soon as the truce was declared, the diggers got busy again, using shovels and jackhammers to repair tunnels caved in by bombing, and to begin burrowing new ones.

Negotiations in Cairo over terms for extending the current truce have reached an impasse: Israel offering an 18-month cease-fire that would involve only a partial opening of the sealed border crossings into Gaza from Egypt and Israel, while Hamas is demanding a complete reopening of the crossings as part of a one-year truce. And that stalemate could bring more trouble for the tunnelers. Egyptian authorities evacuated the Rafah border crossing on Sunday, acting on reports of a possible Israeli air strike on tunnelers. And as Israeli planes streaked across the sky, the diggers scrambled away from their tunnels - but they returned one they planes soared off. (See images of heartbreak in the Gaza conflict)

Israel has vowed to finish the job of sealing the tunnels to prevent Hamas acquiring longer-range missiles - and has sought international cooperation to close the arms pipeline - but achieving that won't be easy. Israel's blockade has left Gaza's 1.5 million residents relying on the tunnels as their economic lifeline. Everything from medicine, cement, chocolate bars and lion cubs for the zoo have entered Gaza through hundreds of deep, sandy holes. Says Aymad, a tunnel-digger with a Palestinian kafiya wrapped around his head: "The Israelis destroyed dozens of tunnels, but many more are left un-damaged, and as long as they keep us under siege we will keep digging more."

Since the ceasefire, the tunnel-makers have become more brazen. They dig in plain sight of the Egyptian border watchtowers and the Israeli surveillance aircraft, with a large bubble of tattered plastic over each entrance. Thousands of Gazans swarm around the pitted, sandy area, because the tunnels are now the enclave's biggest source of employment. The men carry shovels, ropes, and stacks of wooden slats used to reinforce the tunnels where cave-ins are nearly as big a danger as the Israeli bombs. Others emerge from the plastic bubbles carting away goods destined for merchants throughout Gaza, who had placed orders weeks before. Some canny traders pipe gasoline through their holes. Israeli planes even blasted apartment buildings along the Palestinian side of Rafah crossing, but the tunnelers cleared away the collapsed debris and started digging again.

"It's a lie to say that we use these tunnels to only bring in weapons. We're bringing in the ordinary stuff that keeps Gaza alive. If the Israelis opened the border crossings, we wouldn't have to be doing this, " says Mohammed, a gap-toothed man in his forties, whose cap is emblazoned with a Koranic verse which he hopes will protect him from being buried alive when the Israeli fighter-bombers re-appear in the skies over Gaza.

The tunnels are usually about 80 feet deep, and the longest ones run for over a mile before popping open in the basement of a smuggler's house on the Egyptian side. A team of diggers is paid $100 for each meter, and they can clear away 10 meters in a hard day's work. "It's crazy down there," says Aymad, "Many times, when we're digging, we'll run into another tunnel." Aymad once brought his two-year-old boy down into the tunnel, he says, "so he can see what his father is forced to do for a living. We Gazans like the open sky, the sea. Not this. We don't like going into the ground." He keeps the photo inside his cellphone of himself and his bawling son crouched together in a narrow tunnel. "He stopped crying once we got back under the sky," he reassures me.

The diggers at Rafah all insist that Hamas and the other militant groups operate their own tunnels, supposedly steel-ribbed and large enough for a car to pass through. But it's not a subject that they're willing to discuss with journalists in a crowd where there could be a Hamas informer. After the fighting with Israel, the militants have been going around shooting the kneecaps of suspected collaborators. Later, one bearded youth named Mohamed took me aside to say that Hamas' smuggling will never be stopped because they were being helped by "men's with guns who are hiding in the mountains of Sinai". He adds enigmatically, "The Egyptians are afraid of these men." Some Israeli intelligence reports say that al-Qaeda has found supporters among the Bedouin tribes of Sinai who chafe under the repression of the Egyptian army, and they may be making common cause with Gaza's militants.

Israel secured pledges from Egypt, the European Union and the U.S. to stop the weapons flowing into Gaza. But Gazans are worried that if they close the tunnels, it could cut off the few threads of commerce and supplies leading into Gaza. "If Israel keeps the borders sealed off, we'll keep digging and only Allah can stop us. Let the Israelis drop their bombs. Without the tunnels we can't survive anyway," says Ayad.

"And if a bomb catches me underground, well, they won't have to dig my grave."
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