[Elder of Ziyon] Reuters misses some context in boilerplate Gaza tunnel story

Reuters goes right for the "poor Gazan" meme:

Business was booming for Gaza brick-maker Yasser Qreqea, until neighboring Egypt shut down smuggling tunnels across its border that were funneling arms to militants in the territory and cement and other basic goods to everyone else.

Overnight the price of building materials soared in the Gaza Strip, hitting Qreqea's key customers and, industry sources said, slowing the construction of apartments, roads and houses across the enclave run by Hamas.

"Business is dead and we are the ones losing out," the businessman told Reuters in his factory in the densely-populated Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City.

Egypt said it started flooding and sealing the network of tunnels in February to cut a two-way flow of smuggled weapons that was destabilizing its border area in the Sinai peninsula, where separate groups of militants operate.

Cairo's decision also cut a lifeline to around 1.7 million Palestinians in Gaza, hit by a blockade on a wide range of goods imposed by Israel in 2007 after Hamas took power.

There are a couple of important facts that Reuters ignores or downplays.

First of all, that the tunnels are used to smuggle weapons. That's sort of important, isn't it?

Secondly, Egypt has promised to open Rafah for building materials so they can be transferred legally and (literally) above ground. There was actually one such shipment earlier this week. Too bad that Reuters' Gaza reporter doesn't seem to know this.

What seems to have happened is that Hamas is taxing the imports at exorbitant rates and that is one of the reasons construction prices have risen, not only the tunnel closures.

One other salient fact: The prices for building materials in Egypt itself have also  gone up significantly in recent weeks. Perhaps one of the reasons Egypt wanted to close the tunnels was to protect its own market for cement and fuel?

I don't know, but that is one of the things a real reporter should be finding out, instead of phoning in a generic story about poor illegal smugglers who have become rich from their illicit trade in goods and weapons.

One other part of the article that shows Reuters' bias:

The tunnels had been used to bypass the blockade and smuggle in all kinds of merchandise, including cars, livestock and fuel -- around 30 percent of all goods that reached the enclave, according to some estimates.

Today's TOI says:

The government in the Gaza Strip has decided that there are too many cars being imported into the Palestinian territory, and on Wednesday announced it had reduced the number of vehicles due to oversupply.

In February, "we imported 63 cars from Egypt and 242 from Israel, and that's a small number," Basel Deeb, head of imports at the Gazan transportation ministry, told the Palestinian news agency Ma'an. In previous months the number of vehicles transferred into the Strip was larger, he said.

People in Gaza were not ordering cars in an indication that there was no lack of private vehicles, Deeb said.

The poor car smugglers, left without a market!

(h/t Adam)

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Posted By Elder of Ziyon to Elder of Ziyon at 3/07/2013 12:00:00 PM