RAFAH, Gaza Strip — The monkeys and lions were drugged, tossed into cloth sacks and dragged through smuggling tunnels under the border between Egypt and the besieged Gaza Strip before ending up in a dusty Gaza zoo.
Stocked almost entirely with smuggled animals, the Heaven of Birds and Animals Zoo is a sign of Gaza’s ever-expanding tunnel industry. Dozens of passages are thought to snake under the border, serving as a mainstay of the local economy and a way to smuggle in everything from cigarettes to lingerie to automatic weapons.
And smugglers say a new effort by Egypt to blow up the passages will have little effect on the flow of goods.
Gaza’s commercial trade was literally forced underground after the Islamic militant group Hamas seized the coastal territory last summer, prompting neighboring Israel and Egypt to restrict movement through commercial crossings.
Although Israel has allowed more goods in since a June truce with Hamas, it is not enough to meet Gaza’s needs. Tunnel smugglers fill the gaps, bringing in contraband drugs and guns and more mundane items such as frilly underwear and laptop computers, as well as exotic animals such as the lion and lioness that pace in a cage at the Rafah zoo.
They were purchased as cubs from Egypt for $3,000 each, drugged and dragged through a tunnel in sacks. Zoo manager Shadi Fayiz said he went through a middleman to put in his order.
At the small zoo, there is a parrot who was slipped through a tunnel in a cage. He can ask for a kiss in Arabic, startling veiled Gazan women walking by, Fayiz said.
Two monkeys were bought together as babies. So were three spindly legged gazelles, one of whom bit several tunnel smugglers when they forgot to sedate it, Fayiz said.
All told, his animals cost more than $40,000. Fayiz opened shop in June.
Egypt, under Israeli pressure, has ratcheted up its efforts to destroy the passages, blasting tunnel entrances on its side. But smugglers say they can easily build new ones.
“You can’t kill a snake,” said a middleman who goes by Abu Mohammed, referring to the passages by their Gazan slang name, “hayyeh,” the Arabic word for snake.
