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Egypt Floods Gaza's Smuggling Tunnels

Egypt's decision to flood some of Gaza's tunnels last week caught local Palestinians by surprise, Abeer Ayyoub reports.
A Palestinian works inside a smuggling tunnel flooded by Egyptian forces, beneath the Egyptian-Gaza border in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip February 19, 2013. Egypt will not tolerate a two-way flow of smuggled arms with the Gaza Strip that is destabilising its Sinai peninsula, a senior aide to its Islamist president said, explaining why Egyptian forces flooded sub-border tunnels last week. To match Interview PALESTINIANS-TUNNELS/EGYPT REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa (GAZA - Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST) - R

Business was quiet at the smuggling tunnels in the al-Salam neighborhood, which straddles Gaza’s border with Egypt, unlike other border areas where bulldozers and young workers loaded construction materials and food products onto trucks.

For two weeks, Egyptian security forces have been flooding dozens of tunnels in al-Salam with waste water. Palestinians fear this will turn into a systematic crackdown that will continue in other neighborhoods and paralyze the tunnel business.

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