CAIRO: Trucks filled with contraband trundle along on a road leading to Egypt s frontier with the besieged Gaza Strip. Their cargo will be sorted into bags and then slipped into Gaza through the tunnels.
That one has concrete, said Abu Khaled, as he parked his mud-camouflaged pick-up by the side of the road. The gaunt, bearded Bedouin operates a tunnel himself, and specializes in supplying the Palestinian enclave with concrete.
For a man wanted by the police for smuggling, Abu Khaled is remarkably upbeat about his prospects. He shrugged off reports that the authorities were constructing an underground barrier to sever the tunnels into Gaza.
It shouldn t pose a problem, he said.
The smugglers have long been accustomed to outwitting frontier guards. They react to the sight of heavy machinery digging along the border and inserting pipes and metal sheets into the ground with a mixture of amusement and scorn.
The barrier will reportedly reach a depth of between 18 and 30 meters (60 to 100 feet), but the smugglers say they can easily burrow beneath it.
They re taking American money and dumping it into the ground, said one smuggler in the border town of Rafah, giving his name as Mohamed.
No one along the border believes that Egypt will ever be able ? or willing ? to end the smuggling that provides the people of Gaza with food, fuel and weapons.
Israel enforced a semi-blockade of the territory after the Islamist movement Hamas seized it in 2007.
There s a whole cocktail of reasons why it won t work, said Abu Ahmed, a Bedouin arms trader.
The police are corrupt, he says, the Bedouin and other smugglers are resourceful, and if Egypt cuts the underground lifeline to Gaza people there may inundate Sinai, as they did briefly in 2008 after Hamas blasted the border wall.
They used to want weapons. Now they have all the light arms they need, although Hamas is interested if you have something bigger. What they want is food and fuel, Abu Ahmed said.
If the tunnels end, do you think 1.5 million people are just going to sit there and starve?
Police regularly destroy tunnels, and are getting better at finding them. A senior security official recalled discovering one tunnel entrance in a bedroom cupboard ? and another under a toilet.
The anti-tunnel campaign, which Egypt has been under pressure to step up, has made life harder for the smugglers.
Both Abu Khaled and Abu Ahmed are wanted for smuggling and live as fugitives, always armed. They also say there are hundreds more like them.
But they do concede that a metal barrier, if fully constructed, might reduce the number of tunnels, estimated to be in the hundreds.
Some smugglers might even welcome a reduction in the competition, which has raised prices of goods in Rafah and neighboring border towns while pushing down prices in Gaza, they say.
But an end to the smuggling will only come with an agreement between Egypt and Hamas, Abu Ahmed said, and this was unlikely for as long as Israel restricts all but very basic goods from entering the impoverished enclave.
And while the Bedouin remain marginalized in the underdeveloped region they will resort to smuggling to make ends meet, added Abu Ahmed, who was a kindergarten teacher before turning to the gun-running trade.
The senior security official, who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity, said Egypt finds itself caught between its obligations towards Israel, with which it signed a peace treaty in 1979, and its concern for Gaza s population.
You know we have an agreement with the Jews, not to support any elements that are hostile to Israel. On the other hand, the Gazans are Arabs and Muslims ? we do not want to starve them, he said.
There is confusion on the ground. We are walking on broken glass.
He denied that Egypt was building a barrier, saying the metal sheets being placed in the ground were supports for a planned patrol road. However, another official stationed in the area said reports of a wall were mainly true.
Egypt has yet to officially explain the purpose of the work being carried out along the border.
Israel has long complained that Cairo is not doing enough to stop the smuggling into Gaza, and the United States has provided tunnel detection equipment to help end the trade.
If you want to write that we are building an underground barrier, I won t stop you. It looks good for us, the security official said. It looks like we re doing something.
