...I had come to Gaza's border with Egypt to see for myself the infamous underground smuggling tunnels...Finding the tunnels proved much easier than I had expected...Approximately 70 yards from the border, we hit dozens of tattered white tents, organized row upon row, tens of feet apart. Each tent houses the mouth of a tunnel that snakes beneath the border to Egypt.
..."What are the tents for?" I ask Mahmoud.
"They are to protect from sun and rain," he answers.
"It's not to keep the tunnels secret?"
"The tunnels are not a secret!" he exclaims over the din of generators and the frantic scraping of shovels.
Although Israel claims to have destroyed 60 to 70 percent of the tunnels, and has threatened to resume bombing if they are re-opened, reconstruction and tunnel activity are barely concealed in the broad daylight...Jamil el-Masri, a self-proclaimed tunnel owner, allows us to step into his tent with the promise that we not photograph anything...I catch my first glimpse of a tunnel.
The wood-lined passageway comes up three feet out of the ground. A generator-powered pulley is suspended over the foreboding opening to hoist the goods. The tunnel descends almost 40 feet into the ground and runs over 650 feet across the border before opening near a farm on the Egyptian side, Jamil boasts.
...Standing above the opening, I look down, my head spinning from the vertigo. Jagged wooden planks resembling a ladder descend into the shaft. At the bottom, a dark outline of a man is illuminated each time he takes a pull of his cigarette. A string of small white lights runs down one side. I ask Jamil if I can climb down. My request is met with laughter and a chorus of "Nos!" from the tunnel workers. I press on; I am the only one in the group who wants to descend. After a few minutes of persistence, Jamil relents, shaking his head, and asks if I would prefer to climb or be lowered by the pulley. I can't tell if he's teasing, but choose to climb, asking half-jokingly if I can use the pulley as a support grip.
Jamil tells one of his workers to guide me. Ahmed, about 30, with curly hair and matching denim pants and jacket, effortlessly scrambles down...Hooking my hands and arms onto each rung of the makeshift ladder, I slowly lower one alternating foot at a time. Some steps are too far apart for me to firmly plant my foot before letting go, but it's always only a few inches until my foot catches on the next wood slab. I count nine rungs, willing my breathing to slow, until I loose count. A few steps later, the ladder ends. Unable to look down, I hear Mahmoud shout for me to place my feet in grooves carved inside the earthen wall.
"Right foot!" he bellows. "Left!" Until finally, I drop into the tunnel.
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