I see last night news clips of these Gaza tunnels. I am in the construction business, and from a construction point of view I was impressed. They looked very well constructed to me, so I am wondering how these things are paid for? My construction mind is thinking of all this:
**Excavation. **
Has to be thousands of cubic yards of material excavated, by hand or small machine. Removal of spoils.
This excavated material has to be removed, hauled up and out of the tunnel, and put somewhere. This amount of soil is going to make a huge pile somewhere. Temporary support.
You removing soil and you not want the sides and roof to collapse in till you get your permanent walls and roof are done. Pre-Cast Concrete Walls and Roof
Looks like concrete precast wall panels for both the roof and walls. Again, hundreds of cubic yards of concrete, precast plants, hauling these panels into the tunnel putting them in place. Difficult work. Ventilation
You got a tunnel and somehow fresh air has to be brought in and bad air exhausted. This requires fans, and motors and controls. Electricity.
You have to light up the tunnel, and run the fans. I saw electrical cable, but that also means electrical power connections, switches, lights, etc. Maintenance
We all know things break down and have to be replaced. I am sure the same there.
In other words this is a huge undertaking that had to involve several hundred men from well-educated surveyors, designers, managers, down to the day laborers.
I am thinking these tunnels would have to cost somewhere in the order of $2,000 to $2,500 per linear foot. I could be way off here, as I not in the tunneling business. However this is expensive work.
I’d expect the tunnel’s creator/maintainer to take a cut off every bit of stuff that transits through as well.
Also while some of the tunnels are well-engineered ; smuggling tunnels is the primo growth industry in Gaza for obvious reasons directly related to Israel strangling the shit out of the not_country - there are plenty of slapdash ones built by enthusiastic amateurs. They only last for a day or a month until a cave-in kills someone but hey, that’s still some stuff shipped out or food/medicine/explosives shipped in. Totally worth it, as long as the caved in guy(s) are not people you know or love.
More seriously, ad-hoc tunneling is not that expensive to build, really. They did it in Stalags after all. All you need is time, and considering most kids in Gaza don’t have any future whatsoever, all they have on their hands is time.
You have 1.8 million people in an area about 20 miles by 60, pretty much zero industry, and the guys with guns can levy a tithe on everything that goes by - including goods smuggled from Sinai, foreign aid, etc.
Anyone who wants to do more than sit around at home watching the one channel of propaganda TV can volunteer to help the local self-defence force. Except during a few weeks of fighting, there’s not a lot to do - manpower is cheap. The one thing there’s no shortage of is idle hands. Hamas finds use for idle hands.
All those homes, apartments, hospitals and UN schools used as shelters will need rebuilding over the next year, just as they’ve done two or three times before in the last decade. (The only thing that doesn’t need rebuilding is the beach where some children were playing soccer). That means an un-ending supply of cement.
Those buildings are pretty much exclusively concrete and there are tens of thousands of them. There’s isn’t much else to build with in that area. (What I saw in Egypt - they pour concrete frame, stairwells and floors, fill in the walls with brick, then plaster inside and stucco outside. All that uses cement…)
The same goes for the other materials. In an area that is constantly rebuilding bombed buildings, there is no shortage of wire by the reel. As for ventilation, I recall deep inside the pyramids with hundreds of tourists going in and out, the ventilation was air forced through what looked like a garden hose to the far end; or black rubber used for irrigation. It’s probably less important in a tunnel that’s only got people in it during the building phase. after that they can take their garden hose and move it to the next tunnel.
The news mentioned that one tunnel had small tracks in it so the dirt could be taken out by rail - which sounds a lot like The Great Escape.
One of those tunnels probably uses less cement than one decent 4 or 5 storey apartment building. As for dirt, I imagine one of the give-aways was where the IDF sees a decent mound of dirt in a field or yard, a tunnel can’t be far away; meaning next year, the dirt will be hauled away further and dispersed using volunteer labour.
They are only profitable for one reason, the blockade imposed by Israel - we all know why the blockade was imposed, but I guess this is where unintended consequences come in.
No blockade, no tunnels I’m afraid its that easy, and the blockade still has not stopped those rockets from coming either - so now we have over 1000 Gazans dead, the vast majority nothing to do with anything.
You can discuss why Israel is justified as much as you like, fact is, no blockade no tunnels - rockets - blockade or no blockade.
Do the Israelis seriously believe that after they withdraw, having killed perhaps a few thousand more that there will not be more rockets? Nope, and in five years time they will be there again, losing more soldiers, killing more Gazans.
How did they get that dense a population, natural growth? Really?
I think the problem is the hate was bred in thousands of years ago and never was tried to remove it? Sorta in the blood now so to speak.
No rational thought or deed will solve it. The whole region lives this way and really do not want to change.
I think the talk of peace is just that, talk.
IMO, it will take a large and controlling outside force to change the whole Mid East thought process which would take many generations & even then, I think this way of living is ingrained too deep.
So outsiders will continue to try to help but will not be effective because the participants as a whole do not want it.
Education, population control, self help, not free survival supplies from outside will eventually be realized as the only way to make the change.
Just look at the USA, a really solid try to remove racism from our thought processes and with much help from within & without the country, we are not nearly there yet. No racism is still a minority mind set and the thought process of the Mid East is no where as ready as the USA is.
We are trying to make a fix that works here sorta OK work over there where it is and always has been a ‘no go’ & we expect the same overall agreement that their is here.
It ain’t gonna work IMO.
Mu ideas are not popular so I won’t say I have a better plan but we really need to be looking for a better way because in an whole world view, self destruction is happening way faster than our willingness or ability to change.
The population of Gaza were basically original inhabitants of Palestine going back a thousand years or more, plus refugees from the Israeli areas in the 1948 war. There’s still an area denoted as “refugee camp”.
Why so many? What else is there to do? In much of the Moslem middle east, half the population is about 20 or younger. The poorer the area, the worse that ratio. It’s not that people move there. It’s that they can’t get out. Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Kuwait, Arabia, Lebanon - nobody wants more trouble-making poor and uneducated people. The West won’t let them in. They have trouble getting travel documents, and they can’t get out because Egypt is afraid they’ll settle in Cairo, and Israel won’t let them cross their borders.
Between bad corrupt government and the occupiers (Egypt then Israel) keeping the thumbscrews tight, there’s no industry, no jobs, nothing to do. It’s not “bred in the blood” for “thousands of years”. It’s the result of a conflict that started in the 1920’s and has never really stopped.
Israel seems to think if they act vicious and tough, the Palestinians will do what they are told. Guess how well that works in any place anyone has tried it? Look at it from the Arab point of view. Israelis bomb their houses and schools and hospitals. Do they blame Hamas for starting the war, or Israel for the killing? Did you ever have the teacher that kept the whole class after school because of a few troublemakers? Who did you end up hating - the teacher or your fellow students?
As to staying after school, those kids did not cause anything like that because they knew from the start of high school knowing they would not get away with that. So I never even heard of that happening in my high school.
Catholic High School with some really tough Nuns.
We had many tough kids, but no stupid punks like today’s schools.
Yeah, I’m old. Bawahahaha
There are tunnels on the border with Egypt - those are for smuggling.
There are tunnels on the border with Israel - those are for terrorism. They are expressly not for smuggling. They are not in any way “profitable” - unless you count dead Jews are “profit”.
While the OP was factual, this thread has moved pretty well outside of GQ territory. Since I am seeing more speculation and opinion than debate, I think this will do better in IMHO. The thread may end up moving again depending on how it progresses.
Note that the factual part of this topic (the financial aspects that the OP asked about) may still be addressed, and with the forum move both factual and speculative answers are now permitted.
Moving thread from General Questions to In My Humble Opinion.
Except the tunnels to Egypt have also been used for terror. Several dozen Egyptian police and army have been killed in Sinai near Gaza over the last two years. Either Hamas units (or other fanatics) are commuting from Gaza to launch these attacks, or they are collaborating with Egyptian fanatics. The peace treaty with Israel apparently limits the number of troops and the firepower the Egyptians can deploy near the border, so it becomes difficult to control the area near Gaza.
The Egyptians have closed the smuggling tunnels for both reasons - to put the economic screws to Hamas, friend of (offshoot of) the Moslem Brotherhood, and also to limit the number of military problems finding their way into Sinai.
to get back to the OP, a large amount of consumer material was smuggled through the Gaza tunnels, as well as arms for Hamas. The Hamas authorities took a “tax” from all the smuggled goods, which helped pay for regular government services as well as their military.
I seriously doubt $2,000/foot. Labour is free. Concrete, mixed by hand, cost only the raw materials. Ignoring the cost of tools, a foot of tunnel probably costs a few dollars - the major cost would be the (thin) concrete walls and the metal cable tray we see in some pictures. All are very basic materials. This isn’t made by a US contractor using heavy equipment and union labour with OSHA breathing down his neck.