Word: rafah
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Even more vexing are the estimated 800 tunnels linking Gaza (from the town of Rafah) with Egypt, whose border is closed due to friction between Cairo and Hamas. The tunnels are critical conduits not only for weapons but also medicine and food, including live goats and sheep. The occasional bombing along the border is not thought to accomplish much; Israel's US-made bunker-busting bombs would not do much damage to tunnels that are 70-100 feet deep. If tunnels are located - as they were in Israel's latest ground operation in Gaza in January - they are not easily...
...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 their tunnels - only to return once the planes had gone. (See images of heartbreak in the Gaza conflict...
...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 before. Some canny traders pipe gasoline through their holes. Israeli planes blasted apartment buildings along the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing, but the tunnelers cleared the collapsed debris and started digging again...
...diggers at Rafah all insist that Hamas and the other militant groups operate their own tunnels, supposedly steel-ribbed and large enough for a car to pass through. But it's not a subject they're willing to discuss with journalists in a crowd that could contain a Hamas informer. Since the fighting with Israel, the militants have been going around shooting the kneecaps of suspected collaborators. Later, a bearded youth named Mohamed took me aside to say that Hamas' smuggling will never be stopped because it was being helped by "mens with guns who are hiding in the mountains...
...where are the residents of these areas supposed to go for safety? There has already been a massive influx of people from the northern half of the Gaza Strip into Gaza City, while the thousands of families in the southern and eastern areas of Rafah have left their homes to be destroyed by Israeli forces there, moving farther inward. Some people stay with relatives or friends. Almost every one of the 80 apartments in my building complex is already accommodating more than one refugee family, as are most homes in the city, and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency...