Reporter: Liam Bartlett
Producer: Howard Sacre
Would you put your life on the line for a washing machine? No? How about a box of bathroom tiles? A second hand car? A goat?
Liam Bartlett has just spent a few adrenalin-charged days mixing it with a bunch of young men who do exactly that.
They risk their lives time after time, scrambling through makeshift tunnels and smuggling goods from one country to another.
It's a bizarre variation of those old escape movies where desperate men burrow their way to freedom against incredible odds.
The difference is these "tunnel rat’s” always come back, even though their home is the worst kind of prison.
Read Liam Bartlett's blog on this story and have your say
Full transcript below:
STORY: LIAM BARTLETT: We're driving south through the Gaza Strip, the border with Egypt is just ahead. Where the road ends, all we see are piles and piles of dirt - and hundreds of tents. The ground beneath is honeycombed with tunnels, Gaza's extraordinary underground economy. They smuggle in refrigerators, flat-screen TVs - even cars cut into sections. If it's portable, it gets through. From here you can see how big this black market has become. That wall over there is Egypt, that's the border, about 500 metres away. And down below, every one of those white tents covers the entrance to a tunnel. There is roughly 600 of them, a network of holes that one tunneller I talked to described as like swiss cheese, under the ground. Why go to so much trouble? Because Gaza is sealed off from the outside world - a tiny Palestinian enclave, 40 kilometres long, being suffocated by an Israeli land and sea blockade. So the only way in is to dig deep beneath the border. Some passages are up to a kilometre long. They have become essential but dangerous lifelines under the sand.
LIAM BARTLETT: Have there been many deaths through cave-ins?
NASSER NIJAR: Around 300 dead in the tunnels.
LIAM BARTLETT: 300 people have died underground here? And you want me to go down?
NASSER NIJAR: Well, that's your job.
LIAM BARTLETT: It is rare to be allowed here, but one enterprising young guy, Nasser Nijar, managed to get us in.
NASSER NIJAR: Close the door so that nobody can see us.
LIAM BARTLETT: The tunnel owners don't want the Israelis to find out who they are, because they often bomb the area to destroy them.
LIAM BARTLETT: What are they doing?
NASSER NIJAR: They're bringing wood and cement from Egypt, right now.
LIAM BARTLETT: Wood and cement from the other side?
NASSER NIJAR: Yeah.
LIAM BARTLETT: Ancient generators power the lights, winches and phone lines, as they prepare a big bobsled-like device to haul the goods through. Now it's my turn to go down. Oh, fancy doing this for a job! It's relatively shallow. The vertical shaft runs down about 10 metres, then it runs horizontally to Egypt. The first bobsled arrives and it's loaded with bathroom tiles.
LIAM BARTLETT: All this stuff comes from Egypt, eh?
NASSER NIJAR: Yes, sure.
LIAM BARTLETT: There's no room to stand and not much air to breathe. The tunnel supports are ominously buckled. These tunnels are a business in themselves. See, if you own one, that's worth about $50,000 to you - that's minimum price - but there is a slight catch. If one of your men die in a cave-in, you pay his family about $40,000. From where I'm sitting at the moment, it is really not worth the money. The tiles are transferred into buckets for the final vertical haul. They'll be in the shop for sale within a few hours. All these tunnels are built with varying degrees of sophistication. This one is wide and high - purpose-built for animals. After being herded through from Egypt, there's an elevator up the long shaft into Gaza. This is Gaza's only source of fresh lamb, and buyers come straight to the tunnels. As we drove away, they were stashing the animals into a taxi. Nearby, another tunnel and another shipment. Though it is a much less sophisticated operation. This one is tiny and terrifying. Herding the startled animals along the narrow passages is specialized work, and here, there's no elevator. It's primitive - but effective all the same. The sheer scale of this tunnel economy and the variety of it is simply staggering. I've never seen anything quite like this, this is Gaza's so-called 'tunnel markets'. The tunnels themselves are just down around that corner at the bottom of the street. But here - you name it, you can get it. TVs generators, microwave ovens, the odd lawnmower. There's washing machines, radios... ..some a little bit dusty, but I'm told, working perfectly. And come just across the road, they're unloading the latest batch from the tunnels right now, courtesy of the horse and cart. Speaking of animals - sheep, cows, and on good days, I'm told, the occasional goat. The tunnels began flourishing after Israel laid siege to Gaza in 2007, when Hamas, a hard-line Islamist organisation, was elected to control the enclave. Hamas and Israel have been at each other's throats ever since, and the people of Gaza are caught dead in the middle. The United Nations has to plead with Israel on a daily basis to let some humanitarian supplies in by road.
JOHN GING: Food and medicine is OK, and then anything and everything else has to be negotiated and has to be proven to have a very high humanitarian value.
LIAM BARTLETT: What about things for children, like textbooks, toys?
JOHN GING: Again, all of these things have to be negotiated.
LIAM BARTLETT: You have to negotiate with the Israelis for textbooks?
JOHN GING: Yes.
LIAM BARTLETT: The UN's man on the ground, John Ging, says Gazans are getting a fraction of what they need to survive the crisis.
JOHN GING: What they're getting is not what you would get in an Australian prison, for example - three square meals a day from the UN. Not at all. We're so overwhelmed by this demand, we're giving them just five basic food items, which is a subsistence.
LIAM BARTLETT: Would you be better off in an Australian prison?
JOHN GING: Oh yes. Yes, because an Australian prison first and foremost, your water and sanitation would be much better.
LIAM BARTLETT: It makes for a miserable life for people like Jameela Habash, whose carers have trouble importing spare parts for her artificial legs.
DR HAZEM SHAWA: It costs time, wasting time. Because we are in bad need. Maybe for Jameela, we need some valve like this.
LIAM BARTLETT: It is a dreadful irony for Jameela. It was an Israeli bomb that blew both her legs off a year ago, and it's the Israelis who hold up shipments of prosthetics for Jameela and other war victims in this Red Cross hospital. It is run Dr Hazem Shawa.
DR HAZEM SHAWA: Look to Jameela. Jameela, just 15 years. She is still young, she is like a flower, just starting her life. What they did for her? What is the meaning of this? What is the meaning of this bloody war in Gaza, on Gaza?
LIAM BARTLETT: So you you want the border open now for medical supplies?
DR HAZEM SHAWA: At least, at least, this has to be human. They must open this.
LIAM BARTLETT: What would you say to Jameela when it takes her three months to get a part for her artificial limbs?
DANNY AYALON: I think the real question is to the Hamas.
LIAM BARTLETT: Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister, Danny Ayalon, puts the blame squarely on Hamas.
DANNY AYALON: We are not in Gaza. They are the owners of Gaza. They have brought the political situation and the humanitarian disaster to the people of Gaza. It is not because of us.
LIAM BARTLETT: So you control the border, but you take no responsibility for the effect?
DANNY AYALON: We control the border so long as they continue to smuggle arms and terrorists. If they would stop that, if they would abide by the international norms, then the people of Gaza will not suffer.
LIAM BARTLETT: The only ones who benefit from all this are the tunnel owners. Gaza's nouveaux riches, who have found a unique way to make money. Here, they're bringing in bags of cotton. And in the dead of night, some tunnels have been used to bring in weapons and explosives, and when the Israelis find out, it triggers a ferocious response.
DANNY AYALON: Whenever we know that there is a specific shipment of explosives or weapons, of course we will have to take measures as we do.
LIAM BARTLETT: Many people have died digging and working in those tunnels, does that concern you?
DANNY AYALON: If they are terrorists, no. If they are good people, yes.
LIAM BARTLETT: Good or bad, tunnel owners can make a lot of money, so there are new passages being dug all the time. We found these two teenage boys hard at work, but this tunnel looked dodgy, to say the least. No supports and the electrics dangerously exposed.
LIAM BARTLETT: Do people ever run into each other underground?
NASSER NIJAR: Sometimes they do. This is a very big problem. Whenever there are two tunnels that are under each other or beside each other, they might be weaker.
LIAM BARTLETT: But they risk deadly cave-ins to meet the enormous demand, especially for building materials. Israel's blockade includes a ban on all construction supplies being brought in across the border, despite its planes obliterating much of Gaza last year.
JOHN GING: I have no cement or steel or iron. We can't get in one bag of cement, one pane of glass, 10 months later, to actually begin that reconstruction.
LIAM BARTLETT: But if the average Gazan wants to rebuild their lives, rebuild their homes, you can't blame them for using the tunnels, can you?
JOHN GING: Well ah, people are struggling, ah, are struggling just to survive. We don't condone the using of the tunnels.
LIAM BARTLETT: You, the United Nations, will not use the tunnels?
JOHN GING: No, we will not use the tunnels. We demand that the legitimate crossing points be opened up because we need to create an alternative to the black market economy - a legitimate economy.
LIAM BARTLETT: So it's no wonder the smugglers are thriving. They have a virtual monopoly. It's extraordinary, when you think about it. Everything coming into the Strip travels through a hole in the ground.
NASSER NIJAR: It's the only way people can bring goods into Gaza. There is no other way. The Israeli borders are closed, the Egyptian border is closed. It is the only way.
