In Gaza, even the walls go underground

A wall is going down at the Egypt-Gaza border - but by ‘down’, I do not mean it is falling: it is going underground. 20 to 30 meters deep, to be exact.

After unconfirmed rumours first reported by Israeli newspaper Haaretz and promptly denied by the Egyptian government, images - attributed to media-friendly smugglers - surfaced in the Egyptian press and confirmed that Egypt was indeed building an iron wall along its border with Gaza strip, aimed at blocking the multitude of tunnels that link Egyptian town Rafah with its Palestinian eponymous counterpart.

The wall will stretch for 11 kilometres long, from the Mediterranean to Israeli-controlled border point Kerem Abu Salem. It will be exclusively underground.

At a press conference Saturday, Hamas spokesperson Fawzy Barhoum was understandably very critical of the wall's construction. The construction, says Barhoum, is "American-funded and supervised. It comes in tail of the US plan that began under Bush to suffocate the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, after the Zionist enemy has failed to break their will".

With US and Israeli encouragement, a nervous Egypt has been silently yet steadily contributing to the Israeli-imposed blockade by tightening its own border with Gaza. After Gazans blew up a segment of the wall in January 2008 and entered Egypt for a massive shopping spree, a new 3-meters concrete wall was built along the border. Egyptian authorities now claim that the new underground wall tightening the border is a matter of national security, to prevent weapons being smuggled into the Gaza strip. It is also actively searching for, and destroying tunnels.

“A network of several hundred tunnels”, according to the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), brings into Gaza “a range of materials, including foodstuffs, beverages, livestock, medicines, fuel, cement, paper, spare parts and other goods”. Even zoo animals have been smuggled through the tunnels, whose owners provide a lifeline for the 1.5 million Gazans stranded in the small territory for several years now under a seemingly interminable blockade. Goods allowed entry into Gaza are in drastically short supply and tightly controlled by Israel, whose lists of goods inexplicably forbidden entry include such items as jam, toilet paper, and chickpeas.

Tunnelers are not only moved by compassion and humanitarian concerns, though - tunnels are a lucrative business. Digging a tunnel can cost several tens, maybe hundreds thousand of dollars, but it seemingly recoups its costs rapidly. At the reported going rate of $1500 to move a person, $250 per cattle head and the same per sack of goods, the tunnel covers its fixed cost, as well as the running costs - which include electricity, even telephone lines, occasionally ventilators, and a tax levied by the government authorities per shipment.

Despite the announcement of the underground barrier, tunnelers remain upbeat, vowing to dig through, or bypass the barrier altogether. "Let the Americans and the Israelis pay for the wall," said one to the Egyptian press. And if the barrier is indeed impossible to cut through, wel, "the tunnels are minimum 20 meters underground. We can make it 40 meters."

But in that event, the cost of digging will necessary increase - and consequently so will the price of smuggled goods.

A few days shy of the first anniversary of last year’s three weeks-long Israeli assault on Gaza, which killed upwards of 1400 persons including several hundred children, the Strip remains in a pitiful state. Barely any reconstruction has taken place - the tunnels offer drastically insufficient supplies of construction materials, that international organisations are not allowed to make use of by their own internal guidelines.

But the cat-and-mouse game can only go this far, and the pressure on Gaza’s Palestinians, already unsustainable, cannot be allowed to increase any further. Easing, ending the blockade is inevitable.