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Babylon & Beyond

EGYPT: Toys in Gaza’s tunnels

By Jeffrey FleishmanStaff Writer 
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All kinds of things are hustled through the ragged tunnels beneath Egypt’s border with the Gaza Strip: militants, weapons, medicine, migrants, tools and livestock. The other day Egyptian security officials arrested smugglers trafficking toys to Palestinian children.

Agence French-Presse reported that the “smugglers were nabbed after emerging from a tunnel, which they were using to slip a large quantity of children’s toys into the coastal strip.”

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Israel, which sealed the borders to Gaza after the radical group Hamas took control of the territory in 2007, and the U.S. have blamed the tunnels for a flow of weapons. The underground labyrinth bustles with masked men, shovels, buckets of dirt and pirated electricity.

A recent United Nations report described the tunnels as a “vital lifeline” for goods to reach Gaza. Thousands of people are believed to work in the sprawling network. Since January, 40 people have died in collapses, shootings and other mishaps in the tunnels.

--Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo

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Babylon & Beyond
Jeffrey Fleishman

Jeffrey Fleishman is a senior writer at the Los Angeles Times. Previously, he was the foreign and national editor. A 2002 Nieman fellow at Harvard University, Fleishman was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in feature writing. A longtime foreign correspondent, he served as bureau chief for The Times in Cairo and Berlin, and was previously based in Rome for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He also was a writer on film, art and culture. Fleishman has been a finalist for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting and a finalist for the Center for Public Integrity’s Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting. He is the author of five novels, including “Good Night, Forever” and “Last Dance.”

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