By Saud Abu Ramadan
It was uneasy, but a real shock for Ayman Abu Samak's colleagues when they pulled out his body this week into a collapsed smuggling tunnel, that was dug under the borderline zone between southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah and Egypt.
Abu Samak, a 32-year-old resident of the West Bank, was in an Israeli jail for several years. Right after is release. Israel deported him to the Gaza Strip in 2004. Abu Samak was unemployed since he arrived in Gaza.
According to Osama Younis, 29, resident of Rafah, a tunnel worker, and Abu Samak's best friend said that his friend was killed on Tuesday as he was in a tunnel that had suddenly collapsed. Both worked together in Rafah tunnels during the past several months.
Rafah town in southern Gaza Strip, which has a population of 80,000 people, most of them are refugees, is bordering Egypt. The city, which was one day bigger, was split into two towns after Egypt signed Camp David peace treaty in 1978 with Israel.
Part of the big town became under Egypt's control and the other is now under Gaza Strip Hamas rulers. A borderline area was build up in 1980 between the two towns of Rafah.
Right after Islamic Hamas movement seized control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, and routed President Mahmoud Abbas security forces, Israel imposed a tight blockade on the impoverished enclave and closed down all commercial border-crossing points.
Israel has banned more than 4,000 of different kinds of products, mainly food and raw-materials used in industry and construction, but has partially reopened the crossings for humanitarian aids and limited amounts of fuels following international community pressure on Israel to ease the Gaza populations living.
Along the 8-kilometer borderline between the two towns, the Palestinians dug thousands of underground tunnels to smuggle food products and fuels to survive a tight Israeli blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip. The rubble and the destruction at the borderline zone show as if an earthquake hit the area.
After thousands of "illegal" tunnels were dug under the borders, the Hamas government, which rules the Gaza Strip established a tunnel administration, to supervise the activity in the tunnels, one of the tunnels' owners who named himself as Abu Hadid told Xinhua.
He added that those who want to dig a tunnel must apply for a license, which costs 2,500 US dollars. "Rafah municipality provides the tunnel owner who has a license for connection to the city's electricity and water supplies.
