Owners of arms-smuggling tunnels between Egypt and Gaza held an emergency meeting last week, together with Arab smugglers in Hamas-run Gaza and their counterparts in Egypt. The topic: How to deal with the Egyptian anti-tunnel activity.
The Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar reports that the purpose of the meeting was to deal with the “difficult situation that has been created… especially after the war” – a reference to Israel’s three-week counter-terrorist offensive that ended four months ago. Israel reportedly destroyed 400 tunnels during the offensive, although approximately 100 were left.
The meeting was held in Gaza, to which the Egyptians traveled via the tunnels in question. The tunnels are used to smuggle weapons and ammunition, in addition to other goods that are otherwise hard to obtain in Gaza.
Solutions: Lengthen Tunnels, Hide the Openings
Correspondent Haggai Huberman reports that one of the participants later said, “We discussed the importance of lengthening the tunnels and finding houses on the Egyptian side that are relatively far from the Gaza border that can hide the tunnels’ openings. We also have to protect them more massively and prevent them from being found by the Egyptian security forces.”
Egyptian sources reports that five tunnels were discovered last week, as well as an arms cache in Sinai headed for Gaza. The cache included 80 mortar shells, 20 Kassam rockets, and a large amount of bullets.
Just a week ago, between one and five Arab smugglers were killed when a tunnel collapsed. A day earlier, the Israel Air Force bombed and destroyed three tunnels, in response to rocket attacks on Israel.
The Lebanese paper reported that Egypt has replaced some of its forces at the Gaza border with special forces from Cairo. This, because of corruption in the form of cooperation between the forces and the smugglers.