GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Despite the largely successful security campaign that Egypt launched in February 2013 against the border tunnels in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, members of families and tribes in the city of Rafah told Al-Monitor that there are Palestinian attempts to restore some of the destroyed tunnels and resume their activity.
The phenomenon of Palestinian underground tunnels emerged on the border with Egypt after Israel imposed its blockade on Gaza in 2007, as Palestinian organizations, along with large families who live in the city of Rafah, dug hundreds of tunnels along the 14-kilometer (9-mile) border with Egypt, making huge profits by smuggling and selling Egyptian goods in the Gaza markets.
Egypt has taken many steps in the past to get rid of these tunnels due to the deteriorating security situation in the Sinai Peninsula. It launched a massive demolition campaign in February 2013 and set up a 500-meter (0.3-mile) buffer zone along the border with Gaza on the Egyptian side in October 2014. It flooded the area with the waters of the Mediterranean Sea in September 2015. The buffer zone was expanded 1,500 meters (1 mile) deep into the Egyptian side in October 2017.
In addition, Egypt built two walls on the border with the Gaza Strip: The first one was built using rocks in 2008, and the second, which is about 6 meters (0.4 miles) high and goes 5 meters (16 feet) underground, was built in February 2020 using reinforced concrete.
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