For the last five days, Egyptian forces have been flooding with water the underground tunnels that smugglers in Gaza have dug to allow goods to reach Gaza without having to pay taxes ...
"Egyptian measures against tunnels have worsened since the election of Morsi. Our Hamas brothers thought he would open up Gaza. I guess they were wrong. Perhaps 150 or 200 tunnels have been shut since the Sinai attack. This is the Morsi era."
Before 2010, there were some 2500-3000 tunnels between Gaza and Egypt, but the number has shrunk markedly since Israel eased some of the limits they imposed on imports into Gaza. Reuters
Hamas closes hundreds of tunnels from Gaza over "health concerns"
What's interesting about this tunnel story is the variety of explanations being given by different news agencies. Reuters, quoted above, says that the tunnel flooding is opposed by the Hamas government in Egypt. However, AFP is reporting that Hamas and Egypt are cooperating to close the tunnels, because they're being used to smuggle drugs and other harmful items into Gaza. According to an unnamed Hamas official:
"Many of them were closed down because they were used to smuggle banned materials that harm citizens."
All of the statements above agree on the major points, they do not disagree.
Both Egypt under Mubarak and Israel, hated and feared Iran, and wanted to starve out Hamas who was supplied by Iran, and beholden to them.
When Israel was forced to open up the border with Hamas to more supplies, the crisis of existence for Hamas ended.
Egypt and Hamas now want to get their cut, in the form of taxes and bribes, for goods coming into Gaza.
Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood are now the powers that be in the cross border trade from Egypt to Gaza.
They both ( Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood ) want to get the protection money and taxes from that trade. They also want to deny that money to their competitors like the salafists in Egypt and the Islamic Jihad in Gaza.
Add the desire for both the Hamas government in Gaza and the Muslim Brotherhood government to know, and control, what goods are coming into their countries and traveling through them, and this makes perfect sense. One way for the Brotherhood to find the smuggling routes into Egypt is to identify the sources of goods entering Gaza from Egypt.
Statements like controlling drugs, and preventing dangerous things from coming into Gaza are the justifications all governments use for taxing, controlling and monitoring free trade.
[quote]For the last five days, Egyptian forces have been flooding with water the underground tunnels that smugglers in Gaza have dug to allow goods to reach Gaza without having to pay taxes ...
"Egyptian measures against tunnels have worsened since the election of Morsi. Our Hamas brothers thought he would open up Gaza. I guess they were wrong. Perhaps 150 or 200 tunnels have been shut since the Sinai attack. This is the Morsi era."
Before 2010, there were some 2500-3000 tunnels between Gaza and Egypt, but the number has shrunk markedly since Israel eased some of the limits they imposed on imports into Gaza. Reuters
Hamas closes hundreds of tunnels from Gaza over "health concerns"
What's interesting about this tunnel story is the variety of explanations being given by different news agencies. Reuters, quoted above, says that the tunnel flooding is opposed by the Hamas government in Egypt. However, AFP is reporting that Hamas and Egypt are cooperating to close the tunnels, because they're being used to smuggle drugs and other harmful items into Gaza. According to an unnamed Hamas official:
"Many of them were closed down because they were used to smuggle banned materials that harm citizens."[/quote]
All of the statements above agree on the major points, they do not disagree.
Both Egypt under Mubarak and Israel, hated and feared Iran, and wanted to starve out Hamas who was supplied by Iran, and beholden to them.
When Israel was forced to open up the border with Hamas to more supplies, the crisis of existence for Hamas ended.
Egypt and Hamas now want to get their cut, in the form of taxes and bribes, for goods coming into Gaza.
Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood are now the powers that be in the cross border trade from Egypt to Gaza.
They both ( Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood ) want to get the protection money and taxes from that trade. They also want to deny that money to their competitors like the salafists in Egypt and the Islamic Jihad in Gaza.
Add the desire for both the Hamas government in Gaza and the Muslim Brotherhood government to know, and control, what goods are coming into their countries and traveling through them, and this makes perfect sense. One way for the Brotherhood to find the smuggling routes into Egypt is to identify the sources of goods entering Gaza from Egypt.
Statements like controlling drugs, and preventing dangerous things from coming into Gaza are the justifications all governments use for taxing, controlling and monitoring free trade.