By Alang Bendahara

TUNNELS of hope -- this is what about 2,000 illegally-built tunnels at the Rafah border mean to the 1.5 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip.

The tunnels are scattered along a 14km narrow strip of land called the Philadelphi Route, situated at the border between Gaza Strip and Egypt.

Dug as deep as 15m, some reach a distance of up to 800m.

They were built out of desperation by Palestinians trapped inside the 360sq km Gaza Strip by an Israeli sea, air and land blockade.

Recently, after a long wait, the New Sunday Times had an opportunity to visit the tunnels.

Expecting their locations to be a secret, it came as a shock when Malaysian reporters were taken in broad daylight to an area not far from the Rafah city centre.

We were taken to the edge of occupied shophouses, close to several bombed and bullet-riddled buildings, to a dusty area where mounds of dirt were piled next to warehouse-like buildings erected with canvases.

The buildings were surrounded by zinc walls to ward off prying eyes, but under each building lies an entrance to the tunnels spread over a kilometre-wide area.

These tunnels served as a lifeline bringing in food, medical supplies, cement, cars and motorcycles for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Most of the items were smuggled in because they were banned by the Israelis.

We were surprised that the area was just minutes away from the busy streets of Rafah city with shophouses selling generators, toys and goods which no doubt came through the tunnels.

There was a taxi and bus station nearby, probably waiting for Palestinians using the tunnels to continue travelling illegally into Egypt.

Our group, accompanied by a leader or owner of the tunnels, was briefly taken to see two types of tunnels due to fear of attacks by missiles from Israeli helicopters or planes that occasionally bombed the area.

The first stop was a tunnel which entrance was a vertical shaft about 15m deep.

There were stairs by the side of the shaft as well as a rig for hauling goods.

There were several people working in shifts to bring in goods and loading them onto lorries outside the tunnels.

"It is a risky job but there are not many jobs available in the Gaza Strip especially when you are a refugee," one of them said.

"Sometimes, Israeli warplanes or helicopters would bomb the area in retaliation for any missile that Hamas launches into Israel," he added.

The second visit was to a bigger tunnel where even a car could drive through.

"This is the main tunnel we used to bring most of the bigger items and heavy equipment. In some parts of the tunnel, we reinforce the wall with container-like structures.

"We need to do this because Egypt is now building underground barrier walls along the border," a worker said.

When we left the area, a worker pointed to a flag at the Egypt border patrol office, about 500m from the tunnels we had just visited.

That was how close we were to Egypt which supplied more than half of the goods that entered the Gaza Strip.

A few days after we left Palestine, local media reported that the Israelis had fired rockets at the tunnels we had visited and destroyed several of them.

This week, Palestinian Ma'an news agency reported that the Egyptian authorities discovered three new smuggling tunnels between Egypt and the Gaza Strip.

Security forces noticed a lorry loaded with cement while they were sweeping the Al-Sarsouryeh area at the Gaza Strip border, Egyptian security sources said.

They confiscated the lorry that was destined for Gaza via the smuggling tunnels and the goods were seized, the sources added.

Egyptian authorities also uncovered two tunnels in the Az-Za'aribah area, but found no smugglers.

The tunnels have provided a lifeline to bring goods into Gaza since Israel imposed its blockade on the coastal enclave four years ago.

Egypt began constructing a steel wall along its border last year under Unites States and Israeli pressure to curb weapons smuggling.

An Egyptian security official recently claimed that smugglers had cut hundreds of holes into the wall, saying that the endeavour had been a "big failure".

Egyptian government sources rebuffed the report, saying the wall was still under construction.