Word: bordered
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...import of both vital food and fuel supplies denied Gazans by the Israeli blockade - but that also enabled the ferrying of weapons to Hamas - was a key objective of Israel's 22-day military operation, and its aircraft and artillery pounded the sandy patch of land along the Egyptian border in the hope of collapsing them. But as soon as the truce was declared, the diggers got busy again, using shovels and jackhammers to repair tunnels caved in by bombing and to begin burrowing new ones...
...Negotiations in Cairo over terms for extending the current truce have reached an impasse: Israel is offering an 18-month cease-fire that would involve only a partial opening of the sealed border crossings into Gaza from Egypt and Israel, while Hamas is demanding a complete reopening of the crossings as part of a one-year truce. And that stalemate could bring more trouble for the tunnelers. Egyptian authorities evacuated the Rafah border crossing on Sunday, acting on reports of a possible Israeli air strike on tunnelers. And as Israeli planes streaked across the sky, the diggers scrambled away from...
...Since the cease-fire, the tunnelmakers have become more brazen. They dig in plain sight of the Egyptian border watchtowers and Israeli surveillance aircraft, with a large bubble of tattered plastic over each entrance. Thousands of Gazans swarm around the pitted, sandy area because the tunnels are now the enclave's biggest source of employment. The men carry shovels, ropes and stacks of wooden slats used to reinforce the tunnels where cave-ins are nearly as big a danger as Israeli bombs. Others emerge from the plastic bubbles carting away goods destined for merchants throughout Gaza, who placed orders weeks...
...that we use these tunnels to only bring in weapons. We're bringing in the ordinary stuff that keeps Gaza alive. If the Israelis opened the border crossings, we wouldn't have to be doing this," says Mohammed, a gap-toothed man in his 40s whose cap is emblazoned with a Koranic verse that he hopes will protect him from being buried alive when the Israeli fighter-bombers reappear in the skies over Gaza...
...cease-fire, which Israel and Hamas both ignored, but Israel's refusal made it the target of international outrage. The resolution, on which the Bush Administration abstained but declined to use its veto as it so often has done on Israel's behalf, also demanded that Israel open the border crossings into Gaza, and called for reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, an option long opposed by Israel...