Despite Israel's destruction of 300 weapons-smuggling tunnels, including tunnels along the Philadelphi Corridor, The Jerusalem Post's Brenda Gazzar reports that Gaza smuggling tunnels are once again operating. This is not surprising, as the tunnels were attacked from the air. Surely many tunnels were not targetted, were missed in the attacks, or were not destroyed beyond repair:
As security envoy Amos Gilad prepared to meet Thursday with Egyptian officials to discuss a long-term truce with Hamas, fighting arms smuggling, and lifting the blockade on the Strip, goods were being smuggled into Gaza from Sinai on Wednesday.
Four days after Operation Cast Lead ended, AP Television News footage showed Palestinian smugglers filling a fuel truck with gas that had come through a tunnel from Egypt.
The footage also showed workers clearing blocked tunnels, and bulldozers carrying out other repairs.
One of the stated goals of the IDF offensive was to stop the smuggling through the hundreds of tunnels under the border.
The report goes on to say:
Officials told The Jerusalem Post that the new mechanism Israel had set up with the Egyptians consisted of three layers.
The first layer focuses on intelligence cooperation regarding arms shipments en-route to Sinai to be smuggled into Gaza...
The second layer of the mechanism deals with the Egyptian side of the Philadelphi Corridor, under which Hamas digs its smuggling tunnels. Egypt currently has 750 border policemen deployed along the border and has asked that Israel waive the limits in the peace treaty and allow Egypt to increase that number to around 2,000. The Defense Ministry has rejected the request, and defense officials said Wednesday that Egypt's problem was not a lack of policemen.
Instead, Israel and Egypt are discussing the deployment of new tunnel-detection technology along the border...
The third layer involves working inside Sinai and creating obstacles at the entrance to Egyptian Rafah to stop the weapons and explosives from ever reaching the border. One of Israel's recommendations has been to set up checkpoints along the roads leading to Rafah and to inspect vehicles entering the town...
The official said Egypt was open to examining any proposal, but as President Hosni Mubarak affirmed in a speech on Saturday, Egypt would not accept the deployment of any foreign troops or observers on its sovereign territory.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said Wednesday that his country would not allow foreign naval forces to operate in its waters to prevent weapons smuggling.
He spoke to reporters as Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni headed to Brussels, where Israeli officials said she hoped to clinch a deal committing the EU to contribute forces, ships and technology to stop arms smuggling to Hamas.
On Saturday, Aboul Gheit dismissed a US-Israeli agreement aimed at curbing weapons smuggling into the Gaza Strip and said his country would not be bound by it.
It makes no sense to rely on the Egyptians to stop smuggling into Gaza when they have been turning a blind eye to that smuggling for years. Similarly, the international community failed to stop smuggling into Gaza when it was monitoring the border with Egypt. The UN "soldiers" in Lebanon have also done nothing to stop Hezbollah from rearming.
The bottom line is that history shows clearly that Israel can depend on no other country, or group of countries, for her national security but must rely solely on her own military for her security.
