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Robert Fisk: Gaza's defiant tunnellers head deeper underground

The Israelis have Gaza under a seige - and have had so, for many years. There is even a territorial-limit on the fishing Gazans can do. Now the Egyptians, as puppets of the US and with the active support of Israel, are in the process of building a wall [yes, Virginia, like the Berlin one and the one the Israelis call a "fence"] along the Gaza-Egyptian border.

Where that is supposed to leave 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza is more than an "interesting" question. With just everything blocked off from entering and leaving Gaza what are its people to do?

Robert Fisk, writing in The Independent, relates how the by now ubiquitous tunnels "work" and the evil of it all:

"They are the real resistance. They are the lung through which Gaza breathes. True, missiles must pass along their subterranean tracks, Qassam rockets, too, Kalashnikov ammunition, explosives. But by far the greatest burden of the tunnellers of Gaza is the very life-blood of this besieged little pseudo-Islamic statelet: fresh meat, oranges, chocolate, shirts, trousers, toys, cigarettes, wedding dresses, paper, entire motor-cars in four bits, car batteries, even plastic bottle tops. The tunnellers of Gaza are bombed by the Israelis, they die in their own collapsing tunnels – and now they face a new Egyptian wall, even the fear of drowning. Terrorists they may be to the Israelis – the promiscuous use of this word makes it fairly meaningless these days – but heroes they are to the Palestinians of Gaza. Rich ones, too, perhaps."

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