Fierce focus on tunnels, a lifeline for Gazans

Fierce focus on tunnels, a lifeline for Gazans - International Herald Tribune

....unnels like those are now a principal focus of Israel's military operation in the Gaza Strip, with bombing raids clearly audible on the other side of the eight-mile border with Egypt.

The 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza regard the tunnels as a vital lifeline to the outside world, from which they are otherwise almost completely shut off by the Israeli military's control of land, sea and air access to the north, east and west of Gaza. To the south, Gaza has been sealed off by Egypt.

In addition to the smuggling of everyday goods, tunnels like this, and others much larger and more sophisticated, are being used by Hamas to smuggle rockets and other weapons into Gaza from the Egyptian Sinai, and to move fighters in and out, Israel says.

Abu Qusay, the almost certainly false name of the tunneler who
granted access to one of his routes, said that the tunnels took three
to six months to dig by hand and machine, and could stretch for half
a mile.

He said that the profits were divided among 10
partners — tunnel owners, builders, gatekeepers and smugglers
— and that charges were high because the hole might operate for a
year, or only a day, depending on when it collapsed or when the
Israelis found it.

He said that before Israel left Gaza
in 2005, about 95 percent of what the tunnelers brought in was weapons
and ammunition. The most profitable items used to be bullets, for which
smugglers charged around $5 each, and Kalashnikov machine guns, he
said, adding, "We made a lot of profit from whoever paid."

That
pattern changed after Hamas forced its main rivals, Fatah, out of Gaza
in 2007, Abu Qusay said, because so many weapons were coming in through
the holes run by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups that prices
dropped, slashing profits. Since then, most of the ordinary tunnelers'
business, he said, was in everyday goods like electronics, cigarettes,
cheese and infant formula.

"The factions have their own
tunnels, so they bring in all their money, banned personnel and
whatever weapons they can," he said. "I don't know anything about them.
There is cooperation from Hamas, they give the tunnelers total freedom
if we don't bring in weapons or drugs."

From the very
outset of the Israeli military operation on Dec. 27, Israel identified
the Rafah arms-smuggling tunnels as among the principal targets for
airstrikes. The tunnels have also been shelled by Israeli gunboats,
stationed miles away off Gaza's coast to enforce a blockade.

An
Israeli military spokesman in Tel Aviv said Friday that "dozens of
tunnels" had been attacked and destroyed by the bombing raids. But he
said Israeli forces were also facing an extensive tunnel network in
Gaza City and elsewhere across the Gaza Strip, built to help fighters
ambush Israeli troops.

The tunnels played a major role
in the last round of heavy fighting, in summer 2006. Hamas burrowed a
tunnel underneath Israel's border fence to mount a surprise raid. The
group's fighters captured an Israeli corporal, Gilad Shalit, who
remains a prisoner.

Brigadier General Yossi Kuperwasser,
a former director of intelligence analysis for the Israeli military,
said that since the Israeli pullout from Gaza in 2005, the number and
size of the tunnels had grown immensely. That has allowed Hamas to
smuggle in more and bigger weapons, including long-range rockets.

"We
cannot afford to let the tunnels continue," he said in a telephone
interview. "We want to create a different security situation around the
Gaza Strip. In order to do that we need to make sure that we can fully
put an end to the entrance of weapons."

[bth: if I read this correctly though, its the Hamas tunnels that bring in weapons.  Its the other tunnels that bring in ordinary supplies to support a population walled off and cut off from the world by Israel.  Were it not for those other prolific tunnels, Gaza's public would starve.  The easiest way to reduce the tunnels to just the Hamas weapons tunnels would be to open a legitimate border crossing and keep it open. Also at 50 feet those tunnels are going to be very difficult to detect from the surface.]