The sun has dropped below the horizon and the muezzins in Gaza and Egypt produce two distinct walls of sound at either side of the deserted strip that buffers the border.
Darkness falls quickly on the no man’s land that used to be patrolled by Israeli tanks. The 100 metre wide strip is a graveyard of bulldozed houses. Mounds of rubble and steel spikes are monuments to what used to be streets.
A faint orange glow can be seen from beneath one destroyed house, its two floors lying like a sandwich on what remains of the walls. Under the collapsed floor and through what remains of three rooms, a group of tunnellers are beginning their night’s work.
The people of Rafah have been tunnelling to Egypt for more than 20 years in order to smuggle goods. Now there are more tunnels than ever as poverty forces increasing numbers of people to risk death underground.
Ahmed and his partners chose the ruined house because it is 30 metres from the fence that marks the border yet far from any Egyptian watchtowers. It is easy to guard from a distance by day and there are no neighbours to disturb by night. The tunnel shaft is five metres deep and more than a square metre in cross-section. A pulley hangs above it to fetch up the yellow jerry cans that are used to carry the earth. The earth is then emptied into flour sacks to be discreetly emptied later.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1991776,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=1
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