Bedouin tunnel network smuggling cars and people into Gaza for Hamas payments

13 the more-developed south, home of beach resorts catering to international tourists. The security vacuum may have turned Sinai into a regional hot spot, but it is also an economic boon to Bedouin leaders, who have thrived off what is literally an underground economy. Menaei said that he spent $100,000 to construct a subterranean tunnel large enough to smuggle cars into nearby Gaza. "As many as 200 cars a week were smuggled through," he said. "Hamas gets $1,000 per car as tax," he explained. "The buyer pays me the car's price and rent money for using the tunnel -- $5,000 for a car and around $8,000 for a truck." Such a lucrative source of revenue requires significant weaponry to protect it. "This is our operation room," Menaei boasted, showing off two 14.5 mm anti- aircraft machine guns stored in the corner of the room, covered with bedsheets. The smugglers showed me one of their blockade-busting tunnels positioned to relieve the Gazans' suffering from the Israeli blockade and sanctions. It was equipped with ventilation and lighting systems, as well as network boosters meant to amplify the mobile- phone signal. Its entrance was well hidden between man-made huts and fences located amid an olive tree field in the desert. "I get $50 for every Palestinian I smuggle into Sinai," Menaei said, explaining that Hamas supervises the smuggling operation from the Gaza side of the border. Standing nearby, one of his sons demonstrated how the smugglers plunge safely into the tunnel using a rope tethered above ground. Salem Aenizan, a fugitive leader from the Tarabin tribe, insisted that the Bedouins' links to Gaza are based on financial interest rather than an ideological affinity with Hamas. He told me that the tunnels are used to smuggle food, cars, medicine, and construction materials -- but that the weapons trade ceased after Hamas's 2007 takeover of Gaza and that the smugglers refuse to transport suicide bombers or people intent on kidnapping tourists. But the Bedouins' entrepreneurial spirit has nevertheless led to some HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_024604