On the border between Gaza and Egypt, dozens of people are digging and clawing, by shovel and hand, the mounds of rubble left by Israeli bombings — the enclave’s smuggling tunnels are about to get back to business.
Abu Mussa came here at five o’clock in the morning to the spot where the entrance to his tunnel once gaped through the ground and is today marked by a yawning crater left behind by an Israeli missile.
“They bombed it last week. Ten minutes before the bombing, I was sitting at this very spot,” he says.
The damage reaches about 100m, he says. “On the Egyptian side it’s still good, it’s still holding.
“In a month, we’ll be able to get back to work,” he says.
The Israeli military carried out hundreds of bombing sorties all along the 14km border between Gaza and Egypt, bombing the estimated 300 to 500 tunnels that criss-cross beneath the desert.
The subterranean passages have been one of the main ways to bring food, supplies and weapons into Gaza since Israel sealed it off to all but vital humanitarian supplies after the Islamists seized power in June 2007.
Taking out the tunnels — also the main supply route for Gaza’s Hamas rulers boycotted by the West — was one of the main goals of Operation Cast Lead that Israel unleashed on Hamas on December 27.
The Israeli military estimates that between 60% to 70% of tunnels were destroyed during its bombing campaign, the evidence of which is everywhere one looks along the border.
Piles of scrap metal, rocks and earth dot the landscape. In order for the tunnels to get back to work, the rubbish must be moved.
“Come on! Move! Get the sand out, now!” Abu Mussa yells at three teens hoisting bucketfuls of earth with the help of a pulley.
An Israeli F-16 roars high above. Everyone turns to look at it.
“Don’t stop. If we die, it’s OK, the cemetery is just nearby,” he says, not a hint of a smile on his face.
His cellphone rings.
“Where are you?” he yells into the receiver. “Hurry up!” he barks to the tardy employee on the other end of the line.
“All the money that I invested has gone up in smoke,” he says, stroking his unkempt beard. “But if God wills it, in a month, the tunnel will work again.”
He gets annoyed when asked about arms being smuggled into Gaza via the tunnels.
“What do you want me to do with weapons. There are plenty of weapons in the hands of authorities in Gaza,” he says, referring to the enclave’s Hamas rulers.
‘No one knows where they are’
People bustle all around him. Some have rented bulldozers for 300 shekels ($76) a day to speed up the works. Others dig with shovels or bare hands.
Abu Mohammad, like all other tunnel owners, declined to give his real name. He lost two tunnels in the bombings, a third was damaged slightly.
“I still have a lot of Pampers diapers in there. I hope I’ll be able to salvage them,” he says.
“The bombings didn’t do anything but target people like us,” he says. “We bring in only food and children’s toys. You think that they’ll manage to destroy Hamas tunnels? Impossible. And besides, no one knows where they are.”
“It’s like in Gaza City. The Israelis said that they killed fighters, but the children are the ones who died,” he says.
Likewise by bombing the tunnels in southern Gaza, Israel destroyed “an economy that was supplying thousands of families”.
Nearby, a group of men is working behind a green tarpaulin, far from prying eyes. A deep crater opens there and all outsiders are firmly asked to leave the area.
“They’re Hamas,” a neighbouring smuggler says without raising his head. — AFP