Letter From Gaza: Hamas the Opportunist

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The thousands of traders who swarm the once destitute corridor that marks Gaza’s southernmost boundary with Egypt call the area the “Rafah free zone.” They spend most of their day in hot, damp passageways a hundred feet underground, dragging rubber sleighs loaded with goods and then winching them to the surface.

Rafah long languished as a provincial backwater in the claustrophobic Gaza Strip, a clannish and rural hinterland to Gaza City’s bustling and cosmopolitan downtown. A few families controlled the limited tunnel trade that existed for decades. And even in the days when Gaza’s legal overland trade flourished, weapons and contraband were still smuggled into the Strip underground.

At first, in 2007, Hamas only tolerated the tunnel economy; but it began to embrace it the following year, legalizing and regulating subterranean trade. Hamas had found a spontaneous solution to the economic crisis that was threatening its rule of Gaza -- and, in the process, turned expediency into opportunity.

Opportunism as strategy appears to be the group’s new hallmark. When faced with only bad options to deal with the blockade or its status as a diplomatic pariah, Hamas has behaved as if it chose its predicament, leveraging its position into either greater control over Gaza or greater political influence beyond its boundaries. Desperation, in other words, has become an avenue to power.

The snaking tunnels, like Hamas’ contorted diplomatic campaign, grew out of the total isolation the movement faced after it won the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections. Israel and the United States both list Hamas as a terrorist group and immediately boycotted the new Hamas government. In the summer of 2007, Hamas took over Gaza after a quick but bloody clash with U.S.-trained forces from the Fatah faction. Since then, Israel has closed off all but the most basic trade and movement.

In response, Hamas moved to legalize the tunnels, charging licensing fees and opening up the “free zone” to a group of investors who would owe their profits and livelihoods to Hamas. Hundreds of new tunnels have opened every year since 2008. “We have run out of land for new tunnels,” Major Rafaat Salama, the police chief, cheerily told me.

Abu Tarek, now 32 years old, has worked in the tunnels his entire adult life. In three years, he has gone from poor laborer to middle-class contractor, one of the countless unintended beneficiaries of Israel’s blockade. “Before, it used to be a terrifying business,” he told me, standing at the mouth of one of the tunnels he had dug.

Now, Hamas police officers patrol the 1,000-plus tunnels, and Hamas officials adjudicate labor disputes. When tunnel workers die in the not infrequent “workplace accidents,” Hamas specifies how much the employers must pay the survivors -- usually between $12,000 and $20,000, depending on the worker’s age and number of children.

The main goal of the blockade, Israel says, is to prevent Hamas from importing weapons and dual-use material -- cement, for example, could be used to build bunkers, and pipes to manufacture rockets. The blockade’s secondary aim is to weaken Hamas by making life under its rule unpleasant for Gazans -- hence the bans on jam, cilantro, toys, and paper. Regardless, Gaza’s merchants can get virtually anything, even cars, through the tunnels. Diesel and gas flow through jerry-rigged pipelines. Vendors at Gaza’s markets sell essential goods such as tiles and cement, food staples such as sea bass and fresh oranges, and relative luxuries such as French yogurt and the Swiss toothbrushes that I bought for a dollar each.

Nonetheless, Gaza is a depressing place. Almost nobody leaves, and most people do not work. The siege of Gaza might not look like the siege of Stalingrad, but a siege it is. The tunnels still do not solve the fundamental problems of the blockade, including the absence of the supplies and machinery necessary to repair Gaza’s worn and war-shattered infrastructure (such as its sewage treatment system, power plants, and schools, to name a few of the top priorities cited by the United Nations). But they have solved Hamas’ short-term problem: staving off the popular rage that seethed during the blockade’s peak.

The tunnels are also the best illustration of how Hamas has learned to govern. Along the way to creating a new class of siege millionaires, it experimented with and discarded many approaches: firing rockets, adhering to a cease-fire, bringing millions in cash from Arab capitals in briefcases, railing against Israel, and partnering with smugglers. Finally, it legalized the tunnel economy. Since Israel has claimed that it will end the Gaza blockade only if Hamas surrenders power, the movement has been willing to improvise and embrace whatever works -- a merchant’s approach of finding the best deal and then justifying it retroactively.

Hamas has applied the same formula to its diplomatic strategy. It has hedged its bets, alternately hectoring and wooing Egypt, cozying up to Iran and Turkey, and shaming the Gulf petro-states into giving it money and political cover. In January, Gaza’s prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, chastised Egypt from the minbar at Friday prayers in Gaza City for “losing its compass” and joining the ranks of those who “criminalize the resistance.” The Arabs, he argued, must draw close to Turkey: “We are working to build a new balance against the Israelis in the region.”