Economics of the underground

The siege has destroyed the economy in the Gaza Strip,” said Moeen Rajab, an economist at Al-Azhar University in Gaza City, noting the Strip’s land and sea borders have been effectively sealed for some two and a half years. “But preventing the tunnel trade will deny the livelihoods of tens of thousands of people who depend on it.” Up to 80 percent of the 1.5 million people in the Gaza Strip rely on some kind of basic subsistence relief aid. In an economy with virtually no official corridors to the outside world, tunnels dug under the Strip’s southern border with Egypt are economic lifelines. “Despite the fact that goods brought through the tunnels are expensive and difficult to bring into the Strip, there is no alternative,” said Rajab. Karen Abu Zeid, the commissioner-general of the UN Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA), said that the tunnel trade, which is used to