Shutting Lifeline for Hamas Threatens Delicate Balance That Has Existed Since War With Israel Ended Early in 2009.
By CHARLES LEVINSON
RAFAH, Gaza Strip—Egypt is pressing ahead with construction of an underground barrier between it and the Palestinian-controlled Gaza Strip, an effort to close over 1,000 smuggling tunnels—the enclave's only significant trading channel to the outside world.
The move by Cairo threatens to harden a blockade of Gaza, put in place by Egypt and Israel after Hamas won Palestinian-wide elections in 2006. The siege was tightened in 2007 when the militants took control of Gaza in a bloody rout of its rival Palestinian faction, Fatah.
A Palestinian worker rests inside a smuggling tunnel.
The tunnels have allowed Hamas to avoid the worst impact of the blockade. If the Egyptian barrier successfully shuts this lifeline to the outside world, it could threaten a delicate status quo that has grown up here since the Gaza War ended in January 2009.
That war began when Hamas resumed launching rockets at Israel in late 2008 after a six-month cease-fire because Hamas felt Israel hadn't lived up to its end of the bargain by relaxing the siege. Israel responded with a 23-day assault because it was neither willing to tolerate more rocket fire nor open up the border crossings as Hamas wanted. Thus the tunnel boom after the war—although it allowed Hamas to rearm—also let both sides avoid making difficult compromises without enduring a humanitarian crisis or more violence. Last year was one of the least violent years in memory along the border.
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Egypt has long helped to enforce the siege by keeping official border crossings with Gaza mostly closed, but turned a blind eye to tunnel trade. Last year, Cairo had a change of heart after a series of incidents lead Egyptian security officials to conclude that the tunnels were attracting groups and individuals to its territory that could pose a threat to Egypt itself.
In April, Egyptian authorities arrested a group of Hezbollah operatives, whom it accused of planning to target Suez Canal shipping, among other things.
"It came to the attention of our security services that those tunnels were being used in ways that threaten Egyptian security," said Hossam Zaki, a foreign ministry spokesman.
Egypt began work on the border fortifications around the start of the year. That coincided with the collapse of Egypt-brokered talks between Hamas and Fatah. Egypt has blamed Hamas for the collapse of the talks, which are seen as a stepping stone to any Israeli-Palestinian peace accord.
Israel has praised Egypt's stepped-up efforts to combat smuggling. Egypt says its security was threatened by a growing flow of illicit goods and militants through its territory.
Recent Palestinian anger at the Egyptian construction has turned violent, including a Jan. 6 shooting that left an Egyptian border guard dead, allegedly by a Palestinian sniper.
The tunnels were dug in the 1980s to smuggle drugs, weapons and other illicit goods into Gaza. But in the past year or two, they have blossomed into what is essentially a regulated port of entry for the Hamas-administered Gaza government, through which 80% of the enclave's imports arrive, according to United Nations officials. Without the tunnels, Gazans would have no reliable means of getting goods. "We feel pain and anger towards Egypt over the steel wall on our border," said Ismail Haniya, prime minister of the Hamas-led government in Gaza.
Metal slabs lay on the ground last month on the Egyptian side of the border where Cairo has started building its barrier.
Maj. Rafaat Salama, commander of a newly formed police unit responsible for overseeing the tunnels offers a window onto the tunnels' evolving role.
The unit was established in August and has since doubled to 300 members. A longtime Hamas fighter, Maj. Salama joined the Palestinian police in 2006 after Hamas's victory in Palestinian elections. At the time, Israel and Egypt—with U.S. backing—limited the flow of goods into Gaza, in a move to pressure the group, which is designated a terror group by Washington and Israel.
After the putsch in 2007, Maj. Salama was named deputy police chief in Rafah. Egypt and Israel tightened their blockade, allowing only carefully vetted humanitarian aid through official overland routes.
The tunnel business boomed.
Hamas at first adopted a hands-off approach to the tunnels, and Palestinian operators saw opportunity. In 2008, they began courting prominent Gaza City businessmen as investors and customers in new tunnels.
Along with basic commodities and consumer goods, Hamas and other militant groups used the tunnels to import weapons.
In December 2008, in response to rocket attacks by Gaza-based militants on southern Israel, Israel launched its 23-day assault. In the war's aftermath, Israel further tightened its siege.
But demand for reconstruction material soared. More tunnels sprung up. As the government began to police and regulate the tunnels trade, businessmen who once shunned them reconsidered.
In a tailored sports coat and button-down oxford shirt, Gaza-based cement wholesaler Abdel Salam al-Masry says he is no smuggler. But sensing a surge in cement demand after the war, he took his first trip to the tunnels in February 2009.
"I came down and started asking a lot of questions," he says. Today, he says he brings an average of 150 to 200 tons of cement, ordered from Turkish and Egyptian companies, through three different tunnels each day.
He pays $100 a ton for the cement to suppliers and $150 more to tunnel owners. He resells the cement in Gaza at a $10 markup—about $260 a ton. Tunnel owners, in turn, pay about $2,500 in annual fees to the Rafah municipality for each tunnel.
In November, Maj. Salama was named commander of the tunnels unit. Today, the onetime militant is a bleary-eyed bureaucrat, acting as chief customs official, tunnel safety inspector, and arbiter of labor disputes.
A sign in his office—a sparse aluminum trailer dropped in the sand along the border—declares it illegal to bring drugs, alcohol, weapons, people and stolen cars through the tunnels. Outside, white plastic tents, each shading a separate tunnel, stretch for as far as the eye can see along the nine-mile border.
Egypt has provided few details on the exact nature of its barrier. Mr. Zaki said it is an "underground construction" that will be completed within a year. He said it will stop at least 60% of the contraband going to Gaza.
For Mr. Masry, the cement importer, the barrier is a potential disaster. "It will not be easy to continue working," he say
