Last February, the crossing authorities of the Israeli occupation announced the seizure of 10,000 bullets intended for rifles and pistols at the Kerem Shalom commercial crossing that were on their way to Gaza, after they were hidden inside a shipment of household appliances, which highlights the size of the supervisory authority it possesses. It is practiced by the occupation at its outlets with the Gaza Strip to prevent the entry of everything that could be used by the Palestinian resistance, or even to conduct the daily lives of the Palestinians.
On the other hand, this huge control machine becomes incapacitated or blind when the seized narcotic materials are on their way to the residents of Gaza, as these materials are easily passed by the occupation authorities, who possess modern inspection tools that are capable of recognizing certain brands of clothing that are prohibited from entering the Strip.
On the other side of the aforementioned crossing, the Palestinian employees of the crossing do not stop making efforts to discover the drugs inside the shipments after they pass through the Israeli inspection personnel.
In total, Hebrew estimates indicate that the volume of the drug trade in the Gaza Strip, that geographically limited entity that is besieged by Israel, is approximately $2.5 million annually.
Among the most narcotic substances smuggled into Gaza are hashish and Captagon tablets, known locally as "Rotana pills", which passers-by in the alleys can see their sale with their own eyes.
The number of drug cases before the courts in Gaza in 2021 reached 1,300 cases, in conjunction with the escalation of confrontation and drug response operations by the Strip authorities.
From land and sea.. the drug route to Gaza
The use of hashish in Palestine is a relatively recent phenomenon, as it reached it during the British Mandate period in the 1920s. At that time, the method of smuggling hashish through camel convoys became famous, as smugglers forced camels to swallow tin cylinders filled with hashish, and after the convoy reached a specific place, they By slaughtering them and cutting their stomachs in order to get the cylinders out of them.
In the thirties, hashish was served in the bars of Tel Aviv to the Jews, as well as in the cafes of the Arab cities where the Arabs mixed with the Jews, such as Haifa and Jaffa.
In the fifties, factories dedicated to the manufacture of cocaine, heroin, and industrial drugs were established in the occupying country, and from there it moved extensively to many of its neighbors in the region.
The occupying power was involved in the drug trade and sent it to Egypt, of course, as the Zionist paramilitary organization "Irgun" participated in smuggling hashish to Egypt in the forties in order to secure war spending for the benefit of the Zionist gangs.
Not only did the Jewish drug dealers allow hashish smugglers from the Negev Bedouin to continue their journey towards Egypt while carrying the smuggled drugs, but they also used military vehicles under the noses and eyes of the occupation army to transport hashish to Egypt during the occupation of Sinai for 6 years between 1967 and 1973.
As for the Gaza Strip, it is believed that drugs entered it through the border tunnels with Egypt, which began operating in the fifties of the century and expanded during the nineties, as Sinai was a good desert environment for the cultivation of banjo and hashish.
With the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) taking control of Gaza in 2007, the movement launched arrest campaigns targeting drug dealers, while some of them surrendered.
Nevertheless, the tunnels remained after they turned into the only means to lift the regional and international blockade imposed on the Strip, through which vital goods were entered, and thus remained a major source of drug smuggling as well.
With most of the tunnels destroyed by the Egyptian army from 2013 onwards, trade through the tunnels has declined, though not completely stopped.
Soon, the trade routes moved to the Kerem Shalom crossing, which connects the Gaza Strip with the occupied territories, as this crossing became the biggest challenge for Gaza, with the entry of hundreds of tons of goods that pass on the backs of more than 500 trucks daily, and it is impossible to inspect all of them, of course. Therefore, concealment operations have become Drugs inside clothes, shoes and wood products, the new way to introduce drugs;
This made the task difficult for the control personnel in the sector.
The quantities of narcotic pills seized among the goods at this crossing recently increased to about a quarter of a million pills of various types at the beginning of 2020.
There is also the Beit Hanoun (Erez) crossing, which is used for the movement of individuals, but in small proportions. As for the sea borders of the Gaza Strip with Egypt, it has witnessed a remarkable recent activity in drug smuggling due to the ease of transporting narcotic substances through it compared to other available methods.
While the seizure of 321 cannabis packages became famous after they were found in containers loaded with Nile tilapia fish coming from Egypt in 2017, the maritime smuggling operations continued after that in various ways. The Maritime Police in Gaza seized the smuggling of 120 “hashish brushes” to the Strip across the maritime borders of Rafah Governorate. Southern Gaza Strip last November.
Hamas.. Strike with an iron fist
Concealing drugs inside clothes, shoes, and wooden products has become the new method for introducing drugs, making the task difficult for control personnel in the Strip.
(Reuters)
In the face of this widespread activity of drug trafficking, and the Israeli complicity with it, the government in Gaza strengthened its security grip on those involved, and also sought to change the legislative and legal framework in order to tighten penalties for smugglers.
Some of these efforts go back as early as 2013, when the Palestinian Legislative Council in Gaza approved the Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Law, which included severe penalties, including the death penalty, in an effort to end drug trafficking and use.
Subsequently, the authorities in Gaza decided to prosecute some dealers and smugglers before military courts, based on the Legislative Council’s decision issued in August 2016, which stipulated that “drug crimes affect Palestinian national security,” although Palestinian law considers drug trafficking cases Within the jurisdiction of civil courts only.
Based on these strict legislation, a military court in Gaza issued its first death sentence against two drug dealers in March 2017, and the sentences followed after that, sparking a kind of debate within the Strip about whether drug dealers should be tried before military courts and death sentences issued against them. Despite agreement on the importance of deterrent sanctions.
For its part, the authorities in the Strip believe that cross-border smuggling crimes are classified under the framework of crimes threatening national security, and therefore the perpetrators must be tried before the military courts, according to the provisions of Article “17” of the amended Military Justice Law of 2020, which gives him the jurisdiction to adjudicate. In crimes that occur in all places and shops occupied by the security forces, including the border areas of course.
In this context, Meidan also spoke to Alaa Al-Wadiyya, Director of the Legal Affairs Department of the Drug Control Department, who confirmed that "military trials concern only smuggling crimes that take place across the border, because they are crimes that naturally affect state security, and then they are referred The accused - even if he is a civilian - is referred to the military judiciary due to the classification of the crime as a border crime, whether it is smuggling drugs or any other materials, "while the crimes of trafficking, transportation, storage and abuse are normally brought before the civil judiciary.
However, this distinction between cross-border smuggling crimes and other drug-related cases did not prevent human rights organizations from criticizing decisions that refer drug dealers and smugglers to military rather than civil courts.
Meidan spoke with Muhammad Abdel-Wahhab, a legal researcher at the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza, who confirmed that referring civilians to military courts is a violation of the Basic Law regardless of the crime, and added: "In order for an innocent person not to be convicted, all The litigation procedures are sound, which is ensured by the civil judiciary, not the military judiciary, and since the prosperity of the drug trade anywhere in the world is due to corruption, fighting it is done by fighting corruption, controlling outlets and tightening control over them, and not by denying the right of citizens to a fair trial by presenting them to the military judiciary. , according to him.
As for death sentences directed against drug dealers and smugglers, Abdel-Wahhab says: “Palestine has signed since 2018 the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1989 related to the abolition of the death penalty, and therefore it is assumed that the Palestinian Authority will not be able to apply the death penalty in the first place. This violates their obligations at the international level, and this matter is binding on the authorities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip alike.
In response to the objection of human rights organizations to the implementation of the death penalty for drug dealers, Al-Wadiya, in turn, explains to Maidan that the Palestinian and Egyptian legislators have authorized the death penalty to achieve general deterrence, and that execution as a punishment is only carried out in certain cases, which is the use of weapons by the dealer or smuggler against elements of the power. The police or the security services, and the injury or killing of one of these elements, and if the merchant is repeatedly imprisoned more than once without repenting of his crime, life or death penalty is imposed against him.
Al-Wadiya explained that the security system affiliated with the Ministry of Interior, which includes the police, correction and rehabilitation centers, the judiciary, and the Public Prosecution, is intensifying its efforts to achieve the required deterrence for drug dealers and smugglers.
The High Criminal Court established jurisdiction over drug trafficking, and issued strict and deterrent rulings in this regard, a policy that proved effective and quickly reflected on the market in which narcotic substances were recently scarce, and dealers were forced to trade them in the market in secret more than ever before, he said. The Valley."
Israel's new hidden ally
Security forces in the Gaza Strip burn drugs seized in the Strip (Reuters)
The authorities of the Strip are interested in showing their war on drugs to the public, especially the scenes of public burning of narcotic substances that are carried out from time to time, and which are witnessed by the residents of the Strip of all ages.
Many of them see the rising smoke as a victory in the war waged by the authorities after they saw with their own eyes the streets of residential neighborhoods in Gaza flooded with sellers and promoters of these drugs earlier.
These operations show the clear effort of the security services to combat what some consider Israel's "other" war on Gaza.
The last of these operations took place last November, when approximately 1927 hashish brushes, 199 thousand and 675 narcotic pills, in addition to "banjo" herbs, weighing about 4 kilograms, were burned in ovens designated for that purpose.
For their part, the crossings employees undertake exhausting work to control these quantities, relying on self-efforts such as manual inspection of goods in which drugs are expected to be hidden, as well as through the use of trained sniffer dogs, and sometimes through the availability of advance information by those collaborating with the authorities.
To understand matters further, the usual route of smuggling operations to Gaza can be traced, as government sources confirm that drugs of all kinds are manufactured in one of the countries in the region (Syria, where the Captagon trade became famous in recent years), so that they are placed among commercial goods coming to Gaza. Through the ports of occupation, and upon arrival, it is transported to the warehouses of transport and shipping companies by partners of some merchants outside the Strip.
This process includes more than one party;
This complicates the task for the authorities in Gaza.
For example, some small merchants sometimes use the names of large merchants with commercial records, bringing goods through the crossing in what is known as partial shipment through companies, so that one merchant imports goods for the benefit of another merchant, and brings drugs under the guise of goods such as shoes, furniture, foodstuffs, and others.
In any case, the residents of the Gaza Strip agree with the government's opinion, which attributes the flooding of the Strip with drugs to the occupation authorities deliberately facilitating the entry of narcotic substances through the border crossings between Gaza and Israel.
In this regard, Lieutenant Colonel "Ahmed Al-Shaer", director of the Anti-Narcotics Department at the ports and border crossings, in his interview with "Maidan", enumerates evidence of the involvement of the Israelis, saying: "Nothing leaves or enters Gaza except under the eyes of the occupation, when we see drugs entering from The crossings controlled by the occupation, as it is then complicit with drug dealers to flood the Gaza Strip with. In other words, there are goods that entered Gaza after they were subjected to inspection and their order was discovered by the occupation authorities, who then allowed their entry.
As for the second and most important point, according to the poet,
Regarding the efforts of the authorities to compensate for the lack of these capabilities, Al-Shaer says: “We in the Gaza Strip are fighting drugs with the simplest capabilities, and we depend on human hands, including officers and individuals, as we conduct manual searches for a large number of trucks, or through information that reaches the anti-drug authorities that Such and such container contains narcotics.”
Al-Shaer regrets that the Gaza Strip is a besieged area, where the Strip's authorities are prevented from possessing the most basic equipment to combat narcotic substances. In return, drug dealers have influence and capabilities, and devote most of their time to thinking of new mechanisms to develop smuggling operations.
In the end, it seems that confronting drug smuggling in the Gaza Strip has become like another war between the security services in Gaza on the one hand, drug dealers, and the Israeli occupation on the other, as this war is largely taking place over the Strip's ports, entrances, and crossings over which the occupation imposes its authority.
While the sector continues to face, with its limited capabilities, a war that aims to flood it with drugs and destroy its youth who are frustrated by the poor economic conditions.