Running Guns to Gaza: A Living in the Desert

[Scurrilous]

<snip>

"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.

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[pelsar]

1. no more smuggling...

hamas is in control of the philidelphia route..the border between egypt and israel

[bemildred]

2. The beatings will continue until morale is improved.

Kind of reminds me of the drug war, all the big money goes into cops and guns and prisons, and the fuckwits wonder why things don't get better.