The smugglers who sneak consumer goods, cash and weapons into the blockaded Gaza Strip have cut hundreds of holes in an underground steel wall Egypt is building along the border to try to stop them, two Egyptian security officials said Thursday.As I predicted in May, "in a few months things will be back to normal in Rafah." I was off by a month.
Rare footage filmed by AP Television News before dawn Thursday showed one smuggler cutting through the barrier with a blowtorch. The smuggler, his face covered by a scarf, said it took him five hours to breach the obstacle.
But...
Hundreds of tunnels running under the Egypt-Gaza border deliver consumer goods to the Hamas-run territory, bypassing a blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt three years ago. In recent weeks, Israel has eased its blockade by allowing most consumer goods into Gaza again through land crossings, and smugglers say they are more concerned about the competition from legitimate imports than about the wall.Capitalism wins!
(Notice that while this article does teach us something new, it still falls into the "romantic smuggler" meme we discussed yesterday. Rich Western capitalists are bad; rich Arab smuggler capitalists are good.)
(h/t Daily Inquisitor)