Lions, monkeys take underground route to Gaza zoo

Rafah, Gaza Strip: The monkeys and lions were drugged, tossed into cloth sacks and pulled through smuggling tunnels under the border between Egypt and the besieged Gaza Strip before ending up in their new homes in a dusty Gaza zoo. But to draw the crowds, what zoo manager Shadi Fayez really wants to bring through the underground passages is an elephant.

The 'Heaven of Birds and Animals Zoo,' stocked almost entirely with smuggled animals, is a sign of Gaza's ever-expanding tunnel industry. At least dozens of passages are thought to snake under the border, serving as a mainstay of the local economy.

Smugglers say a new effort by Egypt to blow the passages up will have little effect, allowing the flow of products like cigarettes, weapons and lion cubs to continue unhindered.

Gaza's commercial trade was literally forced underground after Hamas seized the coastal territory last summer, prompting neighbouring Israel and Egypt to restrict the flow of goods through commercial passages.

While Israel has allowed more goods in after a June truce with Hamas, it is not enough to answer Gaza's needs.

Mundane items

Tunnel smugglers fill the gaps, bringing in contraband drugs and guns and more mundane items like frilly underwear, laptop computers and exotic animals, like the lion and lioness that prowl in a cage at the Rafah zoo.

They were purchased as cubs from Egypt for $3,000 (about Dh11,000) each, drugged and dragged through a tunnel in sacks. Fayez said he went through a middleman to put in his order. At the small zoo, umbrellas shade battered couches. Under one covered walkway is a parrot who was sneaked through a tunnel in a cage. The parrot can ask for a kiss in Arabic, Fayez said, which startles conservatively veiled Gazan women walking by.

Two monkeys were bought together as babies. So were three spindly-legged gazelles, one of whom bit several tunnel smugglers when they forgot to drug it, Fayez said.

All told, his animals cost over $40,000 (about Dh146,000). He opened shop in June.

"Without the tunnels, I couldn't have done this," the 23-year-old said. Egypt, under Israeli pressure, has noticeably ratcheted up its efforts in recent weeks to destroy the passages, blasting tunnel entrances on its side. But smugglers say they can easily build new ones.

"You can't kill a snake," said middleman Abu Mohammad, referring to the passages by their Gazan slang.

Like other traders interviewed, he declined to give his real name, fearing retribution from Egypt and tax demands from Gaza's Hamas rulers.

Gaza traders come to his office in Rafah with lists of products - food, clothes, motor oil. He contacts Egyptian traders to find them, then shops for the cheapest tunnel to haul them through, ensuring a bigger profit.

"Some tunnels want $100 (about Dh367) a box, some just $70 (about Dh257). You have to compare prices," he said. Such competition in the smuggling market was unthinkable before the Hamas takeover, when there were fewer passages and overland borders still worked.

Rows of lacy underwear hang in Abu Mohammad's shop, left from a previous shipment. They were big sellers through the summer, when most Gazan weddings take place. This season, traders are ordering nuts for Ramadan, an upcoming Muslim holy month when the devout fast throughout the day and usually snack through the night.

Traders estimate about a hundred tunnels now run under the border, with the number rising since the Hamas takeover.

Israel has demanded that Egypt block weapons smuggling into Gaza. Israel's main concerns about the current truce is that Hamas will use it to rearm.