Gaza Strip smuggling tunnels
In November 2005, two agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority permitted the reopening of the crossing with third-party European Union assistance.
[7] The Karni and Rafah checkpoints were closed again, resulting in "severe personal and economic hardship for Gaza's 1.4 million population", according to OCHA.
[6] The blockade of the Gaza Strip has caused a shortage of certain basic products, especially construction materials, fuel, some consumer articles, and medicines and medical supplies.
[14][6] A 2015 report of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) noted that between 2007 and 2013, more than 1,532 tunnels were running under the border to mitigate the impact of the blockade on Gaza.
Gaza's sole power plant ran on diesel from Egypt brought through the tunnels in the range of 1 million litres per day before June 2013.
UNCTAD reported that the end of the tunnel economy highlighted an urgent need for the complete and immediate lifting of Israel's blockade on Gaza.
After Egypt demolished hundreds of tunnels in 2013 and Israel closed the Kerem Shalom Crossing, a shortage in fuel caused the shut down of the power plant.
[16] Increased fuel shortages and high prices, due to the intensified anti-tunnels measures by the Egyptian government under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, halted the functioning of sewage treatment facilities in Gaza in 2014.
[17] Facing the restriction of the Palestinian freedom of movement, an advanced system of human transport has been established, including the issue of tickets which serve as a travel permit.
As travelling through the Israeli crossings is only permitted by exception, and the Rafah Crossing is opened for limited periods, if opened at all, the tunnels have often become the only outlet for the strip's residents[18] The tunnels are used as part of a route into Israel by smugglers and terrorists, named the Het route by the Israeli military because of a similar shape to the Hebrew letter Het.
[19] According to an article by Nicolas Pelham in the IPS Journal of Palestine Studies, child labor is employed in the smuggling tunnels with the justification that children are more "nimble."
[4] Benjamin Netanyahu used the IPS publication to document his claim that "Hamas puts children to work in terror tunnels, sending them to their death."
The response further stated that "Pelham never suggests, as the prime minister seemed to imply in his comments, that children were ever used to build tunnels for military purposes, least of all into Israel", although "Hamas, as the governing authority in Gaza, did not implement its own directives to prevent the use of child labor".
[21] While many tunnels are of a generally high quality of engineering and construction – with some including electricity, ventilation, intercoms, and a rail system – they are still very dangerous and are prone to cave-ins.
[25] Israel, Egypt, the United States, and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries have pledged to stop or slow smuggling to Gaza by land and sea.
[23] Although Israeli air strikes rendered over 100 tunnels inoperative during Operation Pillar of Defense, many of them were restored within a few weeks because the main damage was sustained at the openings, not in the middle sections.
[23] During the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, Israel launched a ground offensive into Gaza with the primary objective being to fully destroy the cross border tunnels.
[34] In 2013, the Egyptian military started resorting to a pungent new tactic to shut down the smuggling tunnels connecting Sinai and Gaza: flooding them with sewage.
[40] On 6 February 2016, Israeli Minister Yuval Steinitz said that Sisi ordered the flooding of several Hamas tunnels to a certain extent due to Israel's request.
