How many people take part? Daud: "It depends on the urgency and on the length of the tunnel. Usually six people work for half a year in two shifts. From 6 A.M. until 2 P.M., and then the second shift comes in."
Two shifts, day after day, eight hours a shift, with two breaks to eat and rest. Like any organized workplace. They talked about their work as though they were digging in a coal mine. But here there is no organizing and there are no unions and there is no struggle for better conditions. This is a cohesive group filled with esprit de corps.
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eamwork is a necessary condition for success: There is no room for individualism or for idleness. Only thus is it possible to survive underground and even "to enjoy the work," they say.
Jaber, Muans and Daud are an "A-team," reading each other's feelings with a wink of the eye or a movement of an eyebrow, understanding each other's wishes. "When you dig there is no time and no place to quarrel," they explain. "If someone is angry at someone, he has no place to go, he has to stay next to him with his back bent, so we prefer not to quarrel."
The desert-type sand and the soft loess soil of Rafah are the "dream" of every excavator. The three have learned the features and advantages of the good earth. Daud usually takes the lead in the work. He is the chief digger, the team leader, equipped with a kind of small sickle that he made himself. His friends have heavier equipment shovels, a hoe and carts, which they pull by hand with the help of cables that are stretched along the entire length of the tunnel. Muans (or Jaber) fill the carts with sand that Daud provides in abundance and sends them back. The last person in the chain empties the sand into bags that will be emptied only when the area will be clear. "There
is a kind of electrical digging tool that revolves like a fan, but it is not convenient, it makes a lot of dust and sends sand flying, which makes it hard to work," Daud says. In the tunnel business, too, it turns out, manual labor is more efficient than any modern instruments.
How high is a tunnel? Can you stand up in it? Muans: "No way. A tunnel you can stand up in costs twice as much and is 20 times as dangerous for the workers. Do you know that one square meter of digging fills a whole
cart with sand? So why take chances? There is no reason."
Daud: "A tunnel is no more than 80 centimeters high, and that is enough for us to crawl on our knees and work comfortably. When I want to rest, I dig a little space to the side, like a bed, rest, put one foot on the other, a quarter of an hour, half an hour, and even smoke a cigarette. When I finish resting, I get out of the bed, fold it up and go back to work."
Muans and Jaber burst out laughing at these images, which are taken from life "on top" a bed and relaxing with one foot on the other.
You talk about this work like it is great fun. Jaber, seriously: "Do you know how quiet it is there?"
Air supply After 50 meters of digging, the work of navigation begins. Jaber shows me a telescopic pipe, which he calls a masura, which he uses as a periscope, like a submarine sending up an eye to look outside, to ascertain that the world up there still exists. "We have a compass, but I don't rely on it. After 50 meters we always stop and start drilling a hole upward. The propeller tool is connected to the generator and starts to tunnel into the earth, like a drill. When it reaches the top I look out and see whether
I have not made a mistake in direction. Do you know what laughs we had? We have already tunnels in Rafah that were so amateurish that they almost went back to the starting
point."
When he said "amateurish," he filled his lungs to demonstrate his expertise in the profession he has acquired.
How long have you been in this profession? Jaber: "Three years, almost. My brother, Ahmed, was also in this business, but now he has retired."
Daud started as Ahmed's assistant until, he says, he became a greater expert than his teacher. "Daud has a wonderful sense of smell," his buddies said.
Sense of smell? "Yes, because that is a very important sense for identifying dangers."
A real professional is able to evade the dangers that a tunnel poses. The greatest danger is the presence of groundwater, which can flood the tunnel and bring about its collapse. The IDF caught on to this, apparently. "The Jews, the whores, would send water deep into the ground so we would be hurt."
But the diggers learned how to cope with the danger of flooding, too. Daud's famous "sense of smell" did not disappoint. "I can smell water from a long way," he boasts. "I smell it through my fingers. When my fingers feel damp sand, I stop and think right away. My life and the life of my friends depend on it. Sometimes, when the water starts, I quickly spread a nylon sheet and attach a board to it, which closes all the openings. After that I dig in a different direction, to bypass the water obstacle. Sometimes I need to dig another hundred meters to get by the dampness, but that's how it is, that's
the cleverness."
Two years ago, three diggers were killed in a tunnel that collapsed on them after it was flooded by groundwater. That "work accident" has had a major impact on Daud and his group, who understood that no one is immune and it could happen to them, too. "It took three days until their bodies were evacuated, for three days it was impossible to get them out because everything collapsed. We had to coordinate with the Jews to get them out even when we die, we need approval from the Jews to get out," Daud laughs.
What about air, oxygen? Do you work with oxygen tanks? "Are you kidding?" they reply together, as though I had insulted them, as though I saw them as amateurs who are unable to dig in a way that will allow air to enter the tunnel. "How can you work with that? You have to know how to behave there, below, to breathe regularly," Jaber says. "There is plenty of air, you can breathe without any problem. We bring in a compressor that injects air all the time, so it's just like being above ground, there is no difference. I told you we even smoke cigarettes."
Work in progress We went to see a new tunnel a work in progress. Daud, Jaber and Muans did not get authorization to show me one that was already being used for smuggling. "The owners
are afraid and we cannot put them at risk," I was told by the "contact" who put me in touch with the three. "We have responsibility toward them and we gave them our word of
honor." Still, when we passed by a certain house during the trip, Muans had us stop a ways off and said that there had been an active tunnel under that house.
"Do you know what went on there?" Jaber said. "The tunnel owner, the 'entrepreneur,' would come in a Mercedes, park it by the side, go into the house and come out in an Isuzu van to scatter the sand. That is how he was discovered. Idiot."
Indeed, disposing of the sacks of sand is the most sensitive task in the tunnel business. "You will not find even one empty sack in Rafah. Who is crazy enough to throw
a sack of sand into the sea in front of everyone with the zanana (aircraft piloted by remote control) in the sky or the street full of good people who want to inform on you
to the sulta (the Palestinian Authority)?"
So how do you get rid of the sand? "It is all in Khan Yunis. All the sand of Rafah moved to Khan Yunis." They are all amused by the joke.
But how do you get the sacks into the car? "You take the car in, from the courtyard into the house, and you quietly load it and quietly head for Khan Yunis. You pour out the stuff and come back."
By a rough estimate, a tunnel that is 80 centimeters wide, 80 centimeters high and 800 meters long will produce more than 750 tons of sand to be got rid of.
We stop near a house that was partially destroyed by a bulldozer. "When the Jews passed by here they damaged this house. But it's nothing. People live here." The trio led me into the house from the back, so the tenants would not see that a stranger was with them.
The excavation from this house is being made not from inside but from below, next to the foundations. A green tarpaulin has been put up to hide the work. We enter carefully, quietly. One by one. Next to the tarpaulin sacks of sand are waiting to be taken away. Dozens of white bags filled with Rafah sand, which have been removed from the bowels of the earth and will soon be on their way to neighboring Khan Yunis.
"Go in," they urge me. "Go in, don't be afraid."
At the bottom of a two-meter pit I started to crawl into the tunnel, into the earth, flabbergasted at the thought that anyone could call this a pleasant place. I remembered
the film "Being John Malkovich" the people who had to work in an office that was only half a floor high, walking bent over and feeling suffocated, so you wanted to stretch as
soon as you came out of the movie.
My escorts saw the look of fear on my face and started to tease the cowardly Jew. "Go on in, we are here," Jaber said loudly, to infuse me with confidence that, should anything happen, I was with people who were experts in rescue. Everything was dark. Pitch black. No one had bothered to bring lighting equipment, and the generator was not working either, for this coerced and unplanned visit.
Since the upheaval in local life the Israelis leaving the Philadelphi road and being replaced by the Egyptians tunneling has stopped for a time, as everyone waits to see
which way the wind is blowing."
The Egyptians don't kid around," Jaber says. "There, on the other side, if they find a house where a tunnel has been dug, it is the death penalty for everyone. There are no games. With them the law is the law and punishment is punishment. So we do not go into the houses with the tunnels there, no family will agree to that. We leave via orchards and groves, which are camouflaged well. There is a liaison man there who gets $1,000 just to guard the opening and to open and close it when needed. That is his work."
I sat at the opening of the tunnel, barely able to breathe, whether due to fear or because I am not suited to the tunnel-digging trade. I had gone down barely two meters and still had 10 to go to reach the bottom. Imagine a four-story building, but all of it underground.
With gestures Jaber explained the structure of the excavation a half-crescent that reaches a low point and then starts to rise into the Egyptian section of Rafah. Eight hundred meters, sometimes less, with each meter calculated like a complex engineering project
How is the cooperation on the other side arranged? Jaber: "We have guys there who wait for us to get below them and then guide us there so that we will get to the finishing point."
By telephone? "Yes, by telephone."
"And do you know what?" Muans adds. "Now that so many people moved from here to there, a lot of people bought houses in good places and they are waiting for us to get to them there to dig tunnels from their houses. They think they will make a little money from the new situation."
Does the PA fight against the tunnels? Jaber's breath could be heard, before he replied. A kind of sigh of relief at the new situation, though the words he spoke were apparently intended for Israeli ears. "They
are working seriously, Preventive Security. They have a unit with the mission of locating and destroying tunnels. They are more serious now than ever, they want to prove
that they are in control of the situation."
In the same breath he describes how Preventive Security itself purchased hundreds of rifles as well as ammunition that were smuggled into Gaza through tunnels. "Preventive
Security has no weapons. They are still using the old weapons and they had no way of buying something new at reasonable prices. You could say that the fact that the IDF left saved them when it comes to weapons. That was the opportunity they were waiting for."
My "contact" also took advantage of the anarchy at the breached border immediately after the IDF pullout: He bought 50 hand grenades for $250 each, he said, "because here in Gaza no one knows what tomorrow will bring."
The 'contact' We emerged from the uncompleted tunnel and went back to the apartment for more tea and coffee. The "contact" asked what I intended to write. I replied that I would write what they had told me, no more and no less. "Just don't make problems for us with the sulta," he warned. "Write that they are doing a great job, that they are working energetically to prevent the excavations."
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