The first rumors that a building project had commenced on the Egyptian side of the Egypt-Gaza border in the northern Sinai circulated in December 2009.
Although the Egyptian government initially claimed routine maintenance along the existing border wall, by December 19, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit implicitly confirmed the construction of an underground wall intended to prevent the passage of goods and arms into the Gaza Strip.
“Whether a wall or detection hardware, the main thing is that the Egyptian territory is protected,” Aboul Gheit told the state-owned weekly newspaper Al-Ahram Al-Arabi.
Impassable
According to Palestinian security officials, the initial phase of construction at Rafah was completed by late December and builders have moved west. Conservative estimates have put the depth of the wall at a minimum of 18 meters, and extending for 10 kilometers along the border.
Although smugglers first reacted smugly, saying they would dig under it, reports have surfaced that the wall design incorporates water pipes, likely intended to flood tunnels and drench the soil to make tunneling below the wall impossible.
Egyptian security near Rafah has been tightened since construction began, and approaching the border from the Egyptian side requires government permission to pass checkpoints, or the aid of Bedouins willing to provide off-road transport.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak addressed the media in mid-January, declaring the tunnels a flagrant abuse of Egyptian sovereignty and a threat to the country’s security, citing the 2004 bomb attacks on tourist resorts in the Sinai Peninsula as evidence of terrorism by Hamas, which took control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007.
Rumors that the United States and Israel pressured the Egyptian government into taking action were echoed by Karen Abu Zeid, outgoing commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) at a forum at the American University of Cairo in mid-December. According to Abu Zeid, the steel used to build the wall is “bomb resistant” and made in the US.
The Al Jazeera satellite news network reported that US and French engineers designed the panels for the wall, which were built in America and then shipped to Egypt for assembly on-site by the firm contracted to build the wall — The Arab Contractors Co., also know as Osman Ahmed Osman and Company.
The steel used to build the wall is “bomb resistant” and made in the U.S.
The Arab Contractors
The entirely government-owned Arab Contractors Co. is a subsidiary of the Egyptian Ministry of Housing. Established in 1954 by Osman Ahmed Osman, it was nationalized in 1961 and through the 1980s was the largest Arab construction company.
Osman, later the minister of housing and a member of parliament, was a close personal friend of President Anwar Sadat and accompanied him on his 1977 visit to the Israeli Knesset.
Having been contracted to build the Aswan High Dam, as well as boats to ferry Egyptian soldiers across the Suez Canal in the 1973 war with Israel, the Arab Contractors’ role in building the wall at Gaza represents its ongoing involvement in the major developments of modern Egyptian history.
Today the company boasts a workforce of some 60,000, is active in more than 25 countries in the Middle East and Africa and has development projects spanning the spectrum, from bridges and tunnels, to water treatment plants, power stations and hospitals.
Neither the Osman family nor the ministry of housing responded to Executive’s requests to comment for this story.
The hand of Uncle Sam
America has an extensive history of providing Egypt with military and border security assistance.
In January 2008, the US Congress voted to withhold $100 million in aid intended for Egypt in an effort to pressure Cairo to tighten security at its border with Gaza. Although then-President George W. Bush allowed the money through, Egypt allocated nearly a quarter of the funds to advanced tunnel-detection equipment. A dozen civilian members of the US Army Corps of Engineers then traveled to Egypt in 2008 to train security personnel in the use of that equipment.
In May 2009, the House Appropriations Committee voted to tack an additional $50 million for border security onto a $260 million package for security assistance to Egypt.
“The US believes that weapons smuggling into Gaza should be stopped,” said Margaret White, spokesperson at the US Embassy in Cairo, to the Daily News Egypt in December 2009. Weapons smuggling is “highly destabilizing” and could provoke “another round of violence in the region,” she continued.
“Incentives for smuggling legitimate goods into Gaza should be reduced by increasing the volume of commercial and humanitarian goods allowed through Israeli-Gaza crossings,” said White, adding that, “The US has no involvement in the project to install a barrier on the border with Gaza.”
Beyond the wall
In addition to the steel barrier itself and the security stations bristling with detection equipment to monitor and halt breaches, Egypt is also constructing a coastal marina, placing boulders in the sea and heightening its ability to prevent maritime passage from Egypt to Gaza.
Israel announced the construction of a similar wall along the entirety of its 250-kilometer border with Egypt, at an estimated cost of up to $1.5 billion, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu citing “illegal immigration and security concerns.”
Beyond sparking international ridicule of Egypt as a puppet of the US and Israel — with protests erupting in front of Egyptian embassies around the world — on the domestic front the construction of the wall will also curtail a lucrative income source for northern Sinai.
Many smugglers on both sides of the wall have made fortunes from the tunnels, and in impoverished Sinai, long neglected by the Egyptian government, the tunnels have represented one of the few sources of steady income for the Bedouin population.
Others in the area have expressed concern that the wall — which will pump seawater through its pipes — will contaminate the aquifer situated beneath Gaza, northern Sinai and Israel. This aquifer acts as a primary water source for most of the area.
Reports from Palestinian sources indicate that the aquifer is already experiencing rapid degradation from overuse and salt water intrusion.
