Where hope lies at the end of a tunnel

Salah is in a pensive mood: He has not yet managed to buy himself a dwelling or a plot of land along the border despite being a middleman for goods moved from the Egyptian side of Rafah to the Palestinian side.

"Do you have any idea how much it costs?" he asks, giving away the eagerness to own a tunnel under the Philadelphi Route.

He has his plans for an enterprise that promises nothing less than a jackpot - the tunnel will be deep, concrete bulwarks ensuring the walls can even withstand an air assault.

An Egyptian-born bedouin, Salah has worked in Israel. He describes the Israeli bombing raids in Gaza as pigu'im, using the Hebrew word for " attacks".

Surveying the view from a hill from which we had watched Israeli planes targeting houses in Palestinian Rafah, close to the border, Salah reckons that a decline in the number of tunnels in that area has resulted in good profits for the goods brought in through them.

He feels deeply for the Palestinians but he is doing business with Hamas. "Why not? They pay," he says, adding that they are not the only ones.

The closure of the Rafah border crossing after the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in June 2007 may have inflicted great suffering on the Palestinians but those operating tunnels from the Egyptian side never had reason to complain.

Another group of smugglers approaches in a jeep. They are willing to take me to the opening of a tunnel for money - if I agree to go blindfolded. They are not very insistent - there have enough customers.

They are checking which goods are not allowed through the crossings from Israel, so they can start moving those items into Gaza. Weapons smuggling? Salah does not deny it, but he won't volunteer any details.

As we head back to the official border-crossing terminal, he says the Egyptians are harming the Palestinians in Rafah who leave the city. He has his way of bypassing Egyptian officials at the checkpoints. When a policeman tries to stop us, he shouts back: "Call me when you're in Rafah again. We'll take good care of you."

- Bilal Badwan is a journalist based in Gaza