Commerce
An average-sized tunnel costs $90,000 to construct and run; some investors in the tunnels have been defrauded. According to one report, the cost of smuggling a person from Egypt into the Gaza strip is $1,000. A Kalashnikov rifle in the Gaza Strip can cost up to $1,000 compared with 2,000 Egyptian pounds ($320) across the border. A single cartridge used to cost $3 in Gaza compared with $0.08 in Egypt, but since the Hamas coup, and the subsequent capture of the Fatah weapons' storage, the prices have dropped.
The tunnels are used to import a wide range of goods, including the horses that race at the Faisal Equestrian Club. The tunnels were also used to smuggle in construction materials for the Gaza Mall and the Crazy Water Park.
Read more about this topic: Gaza Strip Smuggling Tunnels
Famous quotes containing the word commerce:
“Indeed, I believe that in the future, when we shall have seized again, as we will seize if we are true to ourselves, our own fair part of commerce upon the sea, and when we shall have again our appropriate share of South American trade, that these railroads from St. Louis, touching deep harbors on the gulf, and communicating there with lines of steamships, shall touch the ports of South America and bring their tribute to you.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)
“I am not able to instruct you. I can only tell that I have chosen wrong. I have passed my time in study without experience; in the attainment of sciences which can, for the most part, be but remotely useful to mankind. I have purchased knowledge at the expense of all the common comforts of life: I have missed the endearing elegance of female friendship, and the happy commerce of domestic tenderness.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents.... It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.... It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)