RAFAH, Egypt, June 17 — The Hamas military takeover of Gaza last week was partly fueled by caches of weapons smuggled through tunnels below this gritty Sinai border town. Two days spent with smugglers here suggest that to stanch the flow of weapons, Egypt will have to address the economic and social concerns of the region, and not rely solely on its security forces.
“There are two things here,” said Ibrahim Sawarka, a Bedouin who used his tribal name, not his family name, for fear of retribution from the police. “There is poverty, and there is smuggling.”
In more than a dozen interviews shortly after Hamas solidified its grip on Gaza, local residents said that the Palestinian territory was a primary market for goods in a region short of jobs and other economic opportunities.
They said, almost without exception, that the business of ferrying weapons was more about profit than ideology. Working with small construction tools like jackhammers, people here said they dug a tunnel to Gaza in about six months. The shoulder-width passages were often strung with lights and a mechanized pulley system — like a tow rope at a ski lift — to deliver the merchandise.
One person said that most of the weapons smuggled into Gaza were Russian- and Chinese-made. Others said that the guns, often AK-47s, may have come from Sudan and moved through Egypt.
In the last two years, since Israel withdrew its forces and settlers from Gaza, Egyptian officials said they had increased their policing of the border, blowing up tunnels when discovered and arresting people connected with smuggling. But local Bedouins said that instead of digging tunnels from inside homes, they started outside to avoid the Egyptian authorities’ linking them to an individual.
Israel installed a 25-foot wall of concrete and iron along the border that extends 10 feet underground. But the tunnels are typically 20 to 65 feet deep. Israel also used sonar and other sensors to hunt for the tunnels, occasionally setting off charges in the ground to collapse undiscovered tunnels. They also urged the Egyptians to do more, which they did.
“Of course the tunnels are one of the largest sources for weapon smuggling into Gaza,” said Emad Ghad, with the Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. “The Egyptian authorities try, and they have uncovered some of the smuggling. They announced a case about six months ago. But the number of Egyptian forces allowed does not allow for the capacity needed to control the border.”
In the days since the Hamas takeover of Gaza, smugglers say the increased Egyptian security presence has forced them to lie low for now.
But no matter how much the authorities crack down, people here say the outlaw culture can never be overcome without economic development. Unemployment in the region is among the highest in Egypt.
Many of the Bedouins said they also worked to smuggle people into Israel, often women from Eastern Europe, looking to work in the sex industry.
To discuss their situation, Mr. Sawarka and some neighbors gathered at a relative’s house in Mahdiya village, in Rafah city. They complained about the isolation and discrimination they felt as Bedouins, a circumstance they say leaves no alternative but to work as smugglers.
Smuggling has long been a part of the Bedouin life, but weapons smuggling to Gaza began in earnest with the start of the first Palestinian intifada 20 years ago, people here said.
“Why do you think that people resort to smuggling?” said Abdalla el-Shaer, a resident of Rafah who said his brother was killed more than a year ago, fighting for Hamas in Gaza. “If the country provides employment opportunities, no one will smuggle weapons. With no other opportunity, they smuggle weapons.”
In the expanse of rocky, rolling desert that extends past the dusty, rundown center of this town, there is a subculture of poverty and relative wealth that illustrates both the lack of resources provided to people from the region and the allure of what smuggling can bring. Unlike southern Sinai, with its upscale Red Sea resorts, the north has long been ignored. Homes do not even have fresh running water.
Officials also say that a small group of Bedouins from the area carried out three bombing attacks on southern Sinai resorts. The Bedouins reject the authority of the state because they feel brutalized and discriminated against. And the state continues to press the Bedouins because they question their loyalty to the state, because of their smuggling and because of a fear that a strain of radical Islam has taken hold.
“Security cannot be the sole solution to any problem, no matter how small,” said a general with the Egyptian Interior Ministry who spoke on the condition that he not be identified. “It is the social problems that create security problems, and not the other way around.”
The region’s former representative in Parliament criticized the government. “There is only security,” said El-Kashef Muhammad el-Kashef. “The government does not play its second role of resolving such issues as unemployment and discrimination.”
Forty miles from Rafah lies Wadi Amr, a bleak desert landscape. It is home to about 3,000 people, including many, like Jedeeiya eid Musleh, 67, who live in huts made of twigs and scrap metal. Mr. Musleh lives with two sons; a third is in prison for drug running, he said. They have nothing but a few cushions on the ground beneath a lean-to, and their hut.
“Anyone who has the chance to smuggle will do it,” said a neighbor, Salim Lafy Ali Tarabeen, 30, as he sat beside Mr. Musleh. Mr. Tarabeen, who also was using his tribal name, carries two cellphones, one with a local number, the other with an Israeli number. At one point he received a call from a friend who said he was in an Israeli jail for smuggling weapons.
Not far from Mr. Musleh’s hut was a large one-story house with four white Toyota pickup trucks parked out front. “You have seen how poor people live, now you will see how the smugglers live,” said Ahmed Muhammad Hussein, who is working to help improve the Bedouins’ social conditions. The house was filled with men in fresh clean clothing. Large bowls of rice and mutton were served for lunch.
The Bedouins’ problems are one factor in a region that has been tense since the day in 1982 that Rafah was cut in half by the peace treaty that had Israel return the Sinai to Egypt. Israel occupied the peninsula after the 1967 war. As the border was fortified with walls and guards, families were split and the challenge of crossing from one side to the other became an act of defiance.
Over time, Rafah became one of the most heavily policed areas in Egypt because authorities wanted not only to stop the flow of weapons to Gaza, but also to stop the flow of Hamas’s radical ideas to Egypt. The huge security presence meant that even the beach was closed, cutting off a major source of recreation and stoking tension between local residents and the authorities.
Today, as a result of the Hamas takeover of Gaza and fears of refugees pouring into Egypt, there are even more troop carriers in Rafah. High-ranking officers set up card tables to rest their walkie-talkies and to drink tea as they monitor the scene. There have been reports of some people crossing from Gaza into Egypt, and officials said they had sent some people back to Gaza and taken others to the regional capital of El Arish.
For now, the Bedouin men who said they are smugglers say it is too risky to conduct business, because the security is so tight. But they still manage to drive the area, easily avoiding checkpoints, and are planning a protest for next month to demand their rights.
Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/19/world/middleeast/19rafah.html?th&emc=th