Tunnel me softly
Rafah 16 January 09
If Egypt is going to be as effective keeping arms out of Gaza as it has been keeping journalists away from the Rafah border crossing, any agreement to prevent the smuggling is doomed, US guarantees or not. Despite the presence of numerous journalists in the Sinai coastal town of Al Arish and in the village of Rafah itself, the Egyptian authorities are making life difficult for journalists trying to get up there. The international press office in Cairo says that “no permits” are given to reach Rafah. Just after crossing the Suez canal the checkpoints start. Plainclothes agents ask where you’re headed for and why. “We? Oh we’re just tourists going to a hotel in El Arish.” If you’re traveling with a member of the opposite sex, say that with a meaningful wink. But yeah, sure, El Arish in the winter has never been this popular. The first one is the hardest, for the next few roadblocks just pretend to be asleep and let the driver say that you are Egyptian. Nobody really cares. From Arish tell a local taxi that you’re a journalist. They already know the drill and will take you to Rafah along the back roads, through idyllic dunes and oases.
A week ago the residents of Rafah already said that most tunnels had been destroyed by Israeli bombs, to their great chagrin. “Of course I want a tunnel again, it’s the only way I was able to put aside some money,” says a resident of the Egyptian side of Rafah who asserts that he ran one of the smuggling conduits for the last five months. His story cannot be verified but it sounds common enough. On the first day of the Israeli air attacks on Gaza, he was handing contraband to workers inside the tunnel when a huge bomb struck it right in the middle, out of nowhere, he tells. He got blasted with sand and his nearby home got partly wrecked. The tunnel started on his land and ran some 500 metres under the border, he says. It was dug by Palestinians from the Gaza side of the border and he never entered it, which probably saved his life that day. The tunnel was not his idea, he says. It was arranged through a phone call from Gaza and he received a share of the profits. Almost everybody on the border had a tunnel, he says. They ran so close together that one Israeli bomb would take out several at the same time. Everybody knew about it, says the tunnel operator, including the authorities, “but they always turned a blind eye.” Now the Egyptians have evacuated all homes within 200 metres from the border, for the residents’ own safety. Even if that’s permanent, the Gazans will just dig longer tunnels.
|
