Gaza Strip smuggling tunnels

The Gaza Strip smuggling tunnels are passages that have been dug under the Philadelphi Corridor, a narrow strip of land, 14 km (8.699 miles) in length, situated along the border between Gaza Strip and Egypt. After the Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty of 1979, the town of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, was split by this Corridor. One part is located in the southern part of Gaza, and the smaller part of the town is in Egypt. After Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, the Philadelphi Corridor was placed under the control of the Palestine Authority until 2007. When Hamas seized power in 2007, Egypt and Israel closed borders with Gaza.

In 2009, Egypt began the construction of an underground barrier to block existing tunnels and make new ones harder to dig. In 2011, Egypt relaxed restrictions at its border with the Gaza Strip, allowing Palestinians to cross freely.

In 2013–2014, Egypt's military has destroyed most of the 1,200 smuggling tunnels which were used to smuggle food, weapons and other goods into Gaza.

The smuggling tunnels in the Gaza Strip are tunnels connecting both sides of the Gaza–Egypt border, used to bypass the Rafah Border Crossing, which is used for exceptional cases only, when opened at all. The first recorded discovery of a tunnel by Israel was in 1983, after Israel had withdrawn from the Sinai. The border, redrawn in 1982 after the Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty, divided Rafah into an Egyptian and a Gazan part. The tunnels used to start from the basements of houses in Rafah on the one side of the border and end in houses in Rafah on the other side.

By September 2005, after withdrawing from the Gaza Strip, Israel declared that Palestinians would not have the control of their side of the checkpoint, and the Rafah crossing should be closed. During the rest of the year Egypt opened and closed the crossing intermittently. In November 2005 two agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority permitted the reopening of the crossing with third-party European Union assistance. However the movement of people would be very restricted and goods should pass through another checkpoint (Kerem Shalom), under the supervision of Israelis and monitored by EU monitors. In 2006, the Rafah crossing was opened up to June. During the rest of the year it was open during 31 days at random.

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