All the Monkey’s are Not in Arab Zoos!
In Gaza tunnels we do see quite a Few
So Muslims can see its now left up to You
Arabs Could Have Lots more fun if they Are
Driving Through One Of The Tunnels In A Car
Fatah cannot ever be Better off than They Are,
If Hamas Hangs Them High On The Islamic Star!
August 10, 2008
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
Middle East tunnels running under, and in and out of, cities is certainly nothing new to the descendants of Abraham. The tunnels and caves, under the city of Jerusalem were so many its citizens would, at times, go underground and wait for the attackers to leave or be driven off.
I may have spent more time crawling and prowling in tunnels and caves under Jerusalem than I have walking on the top of it. The Jordanians still possessed the Temple Mount when I was in the Middle East for the first time in 1952, and maintained control of it until Israel took it over in the 1967 War during June. Up until the Israelis drove the Jordanian forces out of Israel, it was possible to go under the Temple Mound through a large Western Wall opening in the tunnel now called the “Rabbi’s Tunnel,” which in 1952 was a narrow dusty maze of spider webs, ancient boards, stones, and rubble, extending underground as a northward running tunnel along the western face of the northern half of the west Temple Mount wall. The large opening was very easy to walk through and made it possible to go into a maze of tunnels under the surface of where Herod’s temple stood. But just as soon as the Jewish forces discovered it, they cemented it in. However, it can still be seen where they performed their sealing work.
Begin Jerusalem Post Excerpt
Lions, monkeys take underground route to Gaza zoo
August 8, 2008
Associated Press , THE JERUSALEM POST
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 Fayiz 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 neighboring Israel and Egypt to restrict the flow of goods through commercial passages.
While Israel has allowed more goods in after since a June truce with Hamas, it is not enough to answer Gaza’s needs. 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 each, drugged and dragged through a tunnel in sacks. Fayiz 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, Fayiz 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, Fayiz said.
All told, his animals cost over $40,000. 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 Mohammed, referring to the passages by their Gazan slang.
Like other traders interviewed by the AP, 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 a box, some just $70. 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 Mohammed’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 around 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 rearm.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s spokesman Mark Regev said he believed Egypt was devoting more energy to destroying the passageways, but also said Hamas was exploiting the calm to strengthen its military wing.
Earlier this month, five tunnel workers were killed when Egypt blew up a tunnel exit, suffocating them inside.
An Egypti an border offici
al said authorities destroy about a tunnel a day.
Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, says tunnels can’t provide a solution to Gaza’s woes.
“A tunnel can bring in a mobile phone, but it can’t bring in raw materials, and because of that, Gaza is paralyzed,” Abu Zuhri said.
But zoo manager Fayiz has a high opinion of the smugglers’ ingenuity.
“It’s just a matter of time until they make a tunnel an elephant can walk through,” he said.
Begin Excerpt from German Der Spiegel via Jerusalem Center for Daily Affairs – Daily Alert
Tunnels to Egypt Keep Hamas in Business
Juliane von Mittelstaedt
August 9, 2008
Abu Ibrahim, 38, the king of the Gaza tunnel builders, is the richest man in Rafah and is believed to be worth millions.
He drives a gold-colored Jeep
and has built a multistory commercial building.
Hamas owes its power in Gaza to Abu Ibrahim. It was Ibrahim who helped arm the Islamists and provided them with the weapons they have used since assuming power in June of last year. According to Israel, 175 tons of explosives have been smuggled into Gaza since June 2007, along with 10 million rounds of ammunition, tens of thousands of machine guns, grenades, land mines and precision-guided missiles.
Abu Yakub, an assistant of Ibrahim, squats next to a new shaft where his men are in the process of digging a new tunnel. Using satellite images from Google Earth, they install power cables, oxygen lines and intercom systems underground.
Hamas is believed to collect about $10,000 a day from the tunnel owners in the form of “usage fees,” as well as “value-added taxes” – all payable in cash to armed money collectors who wait at the tunnel exits.
(Der Spiegel-Germany)
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