The black market for cigarettes in Gaza fuels attacks on aid trucks

Gangs lurk along the chaotic southern Gaza road that runs through military zones, looting trucks in search of cigarettes, humanitarian workers say. Once the cigarettes hit the open market, Hamas authorities try to get a cut of the sale through fines and extortion, traders and civilians say. The black market is fueling attacks on aid trucks and hampering desperately needed aid deliveries, while aid workers warn of famine.

During its 17-year rule, Hamas regulated and banned tobacco consumption, but also profited from heavy taxation of the product. Before the war, cigarettes were widely available in Gaza, little consolation for people living under Israeli siege and Hamas rule.

The political and security vacuum left by the war in Gaza has helped illegal cigarette smuggling in Gaza to flourish, according to interviews with a dozen people who have been involved in or affected by cigarette smuggling in the territory. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to present a post-war plan has prolonged the chaos and frustrated his generals.

The United Nations has said it may have to halt its aid efforts in the famine-stricken Gaza Strip if, among other things, it can no longer protect its aid workers.

Georgios Petropoulos, head of the UN humanitarian coordination office in Gaza, said criminal gangs had developed a “cartel-like operation.” Driven by demand for cigarettes, he said, any truck could become a target.

In response, some private traders have hired armed guards to protect their convoys. Trucks carrying UN aid are an “easier target,” Petropoulos said, because they do not hire private guards as a matter of principle.

Israeli authorities say that the looting does not pose a major obstacle to the delivery of UN aid.

“There is looting in a certain area, but this is nothing new for us,” Elad Goren, head of the civil department of COGAT, the Israeli agency that monitors the Palestinian territories, said at a press conference on Tuesday. “The looting is carried out by criminal families.”

It is often unclear who benefits from the illegal trade in cigarettes and other goods. But it comes at the expense of ordinary people in the Gaza Strip who are struggling to survive.

“There is security chaos,” said 34-year-old Yazan Ahmed, who worked as a restaurant manager in Gaza City. As a displaced person in central Gaza, he is now completely dependent on humanitarian food aid and can no longer afford cigarettes. “The strong eat the weak.”

Cigarette smuggling has long been a lucrative business in the Gaza Strip, where a network of tunnels under the border with Egypt has been used to circumvent the economic blockade.

According to an Egyptian truck driver who transported aid supplies across the border, cigarettes were smuggled in trucks through the Rafah border crossing and sold at inflated prices for much of the war.

Like others in this story, he spoke about the illegal trade on condition of anonymity.

When Israel captured and closed the Rafah crossing on May 7 as part of an offensive aimed at driving out the remaining Hamas battalions, the fragile aid system in Gaza collapsed. When a limited number of from When goods began to enter the country again via Egypt and a new route to the West Bank, cigarette prices skyrocketed.

In Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, a 26-year-old unemployed restaurant waiter saw his profits soar, but so did the risks. He said he entered the profession at the beginning of the war to support his pregnant wife.

His current route begins at fruit and vegetable markets in the West Bank, where his associates pay a driver to hide cigarettes in merchandise destined for Gaza.

“We arrange the cigarette packs at the bottom of the boxes where the vegetables are supposed to be,” he said in a telephone interview. “Every time we invent a special method.”

One method, he said, is to make a small opening in the watermelons and scoop out the flesh to make room for the packages.

“Each pack (of twenty) cigarettes costs us three shekels ($0.80) in the West Bank, and here we sell them for 2,000 shekels ($530)” – about $27 each, he said.

The cigarettes are then loaded onto a pre-arranged truck, driven through the Israeli-controlled Tarqumiya checkpoint from the occupied West Bank and unloaded at Kerem Shalom, the last remaining crossing into the south of the Gaza Strip.

At Kerem Shalom, Israel says all goods are checked to prevent Hamas weapons smuggling. Goren said COGAT finds and confiscates “90 to 95 percent” of the hidden cigarettes, but did not answer further questions.

Adel Amr, head of the Ramallah-based Palestinian transport syndicate, said that “90 percent” of trucks from the West Bank were not involved in smuggling activities. Goren said cigarettes had also been found in aid supplies from Egypt.

Just on Wednesday, an Israeli-owned truck was discovered in Kerem Shalom containing 220 packages, usually containing ten packs of cigarettes each, according to an indictment Amr provided to The Washington Post.

COGAT seeks to establish business relationships with traders and companies not affiliated with Hamas. This, Amr said, has allowed a small group of traders, some with ties to cigarette smuggling, to monopolize much of Gaza’s trade.

Goren denied the claim, saying COGAT excludes businesspeople it knows “to have ties to Hamas.”

After passing inspection at Kerem Shalom, the traders pay an Israeli-authorized Palestinian transport company to transport the goods to the Gaza side.

From there, drivers hired by humanitarian organizations or private traders pick up the cargo. when the road is free of fighting and Israeli operations – and bring the goods to drop-off points and relief camps, provided they arrive there without being looted first.

Looters often wait for trucks along a corridor of the Salah al-Din highway, where their movements must be coordinated with Israeli authorities.

Wassim Aqel, 38, said his family’s transportation company works with private traders. The company pays thousands of shekels to local Palestinians to guard the trucks that travel on the highway.

“We communicate with the Israeli side to coordinate the crews we work with. They are monitored by the Israeli side through reconnaissance aircraft,” said Aqel. His security personnel are unarmed, he said, to avoid confrontations with Israeli forces. But his trucks have not been spared from the chaos.

At the start of the war, members of the Hamas government’s civilian police guarded aid trucks, but withdrew after several targeted Israeli attacks this spring – leading to a wave of deadly looting in Rafah and northern Gaza. Israel says it views the civilian police as legitimate targets of Hamas.

There is “no authority in the Gaza Strip with which one could work to suddenly set up something new,” said Petropoulos of OCHA.

“Today we are faced with an almost complete breakdown of law and order. Truck drivers are regularly threatened or attacked and are increasingly unwilling to provide assistance,” Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, said last week.

Adham Shuheiber, director of the Shuheiber Transport Company, which works with aid groups, said many of his trucks were out of service after repeated attacks. “Israel sometimes turns a blind eye to the introduction of cigarettes … and is sometimes stricter on the issue in order to sow discord among the population and prove to Hamas that Israel controls the Gaza Strip.”

When the trucks reach their destination, the smuggler in Deir al-Balah separates the packages from the products they are hidden in and sells them to another dealer.

The cigarettes are then sold openly in makeshift tent camps and bombed-out cities at astronomical prices.

Since the lucrative black market is largely outside of Hamas’ control, the authorities are trying to influence trade by targeting traders and their connections, the smuggler said.

“If the traders refuse to report to us,” some plainclothes Hamas agents “impose heavy fines,” he said, or “threaten them with death.” Others, he said, simply demand a cut.

As the profiteers fight for the spoils, ordinary Gazans sink deeper into despair. Price gouging has also driven up the prices of food and other goods entering Gaza.

“There are a lot of people here making a lot of money from the most illegal conflict I’ve ever seen in my life,” said Petropoulos. “It’s damn depressing.”

About 500,000 Palestinians are on the verge of starvation, according to a recent report by UN agencies and aid organizations. With no cash, more than half of the families surveyed said they had exchanged clothes for food.

Friends, desperate for a moment of relief, sometimes pool money to share a single cigarette.

“I quit smoking and was constantly stressed, tense and very quick to anger,” said Ahmed, the former restaurant manager who shares a tent with his wife, two children and eight other relatives. They have been evicted seven times since October.

“Everything is being taken from us,” he said.

Harb reported from London. Heba Farouk Mahfouz in Cairo contributed to this report.