By Michael Bachner/TPS

Erez Crossing (TPS) – Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon decided on Monday to open a second border crossing for the transfer of goods into the Gaza Strip. The opening of the Erez Crossing for supplies entering Gaza will alleviate pressure on the existing passageway for the thousand trucks per day that are currently forced to drive along narrow roads and disrupt the lives of residents of nearby communities.

The Erez Crossing is located at the northern Gaza border and is used primarily to allow people enter and exit the strip. The only border crossing used thus far to transfer the large amount of supplies into Gaza was the Kerem Shalom Crossing, located at the southernmost end of Israel’s border with Gaza, near the Egyptian border.

MK Haim Yellin (Yesh Atid), who previously served as head of the Eshkol Regional Council which borders Gaza, praised Ya’alon’s decision.

“Around 1,000 trucks make their way every day along the entire Gaza border to get to the Kerem Shalom Crossing,” said Yellin. “Opening the Erez Crossing for the transfer of goods to Gaza will reduce the pressure at the Kerem Shalom Crossing. It will also significantly reduce the number of trucks driving on the narrow and dangerous road, which is currently a ticking bomb.”

The current head of the Eshkol Regional Council, Gadi Yarkoni, has waged a public battle for the opening of a second border crossing together with Shai Hajaj, head of the nearby Merhavim Local Council.

“We have been leading a determined struggle over the past months to open a second crossing for goods in the north, in order to decrease the incredible amount of trucks riding on roads in the area and endangering the residents’ safety,” said the two in a joint statement.

“The defense minister updated us on the opening of the Erez Crossing for goods, to divert some of the trucks,” they added. “This decision indicates his firm support of the local communities in the region.”

Meanwhile, reports have emerged in Israeli media that Israel will renew its supply of cement to Gaza for use in private civilian projects.

According to the report in the Israeli site Ynet, the cement is meant to reconstruct thousands of civilian structures damaged or destroyed during Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014 and to be used in aid and welfare projects in the coastal strip.

Israel stopped supplying cement to the Gaza private sector last month, due to attempts by Hamas to use the cement for military purposes, such as its elaborate “terror tunnel” project. Several weeks ago Israel uncovered a mile-long tunnel leading into Israel from Gaza, ostensibly designed by Hamas to kill or abduct Israelis.

Once again, Gaza’s ruling Hamas terror group is making sure its population will be unable to rebuild their homes and infrastructure.

After all, rebuilding its military infrastructure is much more important, right? Even when it means stealing from your own people.

Only this time, Hamas has been caught red-handed with its hand in the honey pot.

Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) monitors the flow of building supplies – among other goods – into Gaza.

In particular, COGAT tracks the flow of cement deliveries into Gaza to make sure Hamas is not using it to build terror tunnels to attack Israel.

Last Friday, the COGAT Arabic Facebook page carried a notice that cement deliveries into the region were being suspended.

Some of the deliveries had been “diverted” by Hamas Economic Office deputy director-general Imad Elbaz.

When deliveries don’t reach their proper destination, one has to ask where they’re going instead. But in any case, diversion of supplies intended for reconstruction of residential units and infrastructure is unacceptable.

“This is a blatant violation of agreements on the rehabilitation mechanism,” the Facebook statement said, adding that COGAT head Maj.-Gen. Yoav Mordechai suspended the deliveries until an investigation into the matter is completed.

The statement said COGAT regretted that Hamas “continues to pursue its own agenda at the expense of the residents of Gaza.”

Unlike other individuals who have served in the position in past years, UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nicolay Mladenov immediately responded with a statement noting the theft and its impact.

“Those who seek to gain through the deviation of materials are stealing from their own people and adding to the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza,” Mladenov said. “The reconstruction of Gaza remains critical to ensuring its stability and I urge a rapid resolution of this matter.”

He added that according to Israeli records, “a substantial amount [of cement bound for the private sector] had been diverted from its intended legitimate beneficiaries.

“The people of Gaza depend on the entry of construction material to repair and reconstruct their damaged and destroyed houses following the 2014 conflict and to enable much needed infrastructure and development projects,” Mladenov added.

He noted the United Nations was working with both Israel and the Palestinian Authority to resolve the issue.

This past January, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon responded to statements by the Hamas leadership announcing its intention to continue building tunnels and firing rockets at Israel.

Ban warned that such remarks and actions do a “serious disservice” to Gaza’s long-suffering people and “put at risk reconstruction, humanitarian and development efforts by the international community and Palestinian and Israeli authorities.”

Clearly Hamas has not taken Ban’s advice to heart, however.

A long terrorist tunnel was discovered last month beneath the Gaza border leading from the southern town of Rafah, directly into an apartment building in Egypt.

In addition to its conflict with Israel, Hamas has also been providing technical, medical and material support to Da’esh (ISIS) terrorists in the Sinai Peninsula.

The group is comprised of former members of Ansar Beyt al-Maqdis. They are aligned with Egypt’s outlawed Muslim Brotherhood which is locked in an all-out war against the Cairo government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, 20,064 tons of goods in 611 trucks entered Gaza from Israel via the Kerem Shalom land crossing. There were 1,608 crossings by foreign nationals, local merchants and others in and out of the region via the Erez Crossing with Israel, in addition to seven ambulances who also entered and left Gaza.

In many ways this area operates more like a standard foreign border crossing than it does the “blockade” that far-left agitators and anti-Israel detractors keep bleating about.

It’s difficult to get a handle on the tone of a recent report by the radical left-wing organization Gisha.

In a recent article, they report on how much building materials such as concrete and cement have been brought into Gaza since the end of Operation Protective Edge in August 2014.

Gisha complains that this amount isn’t nearly enough, making up only 3.9% of the amount of building material that Gaza needs to for reconstruction.

They claim that Gaza needs 5 million tons of building materials.

It would appear that Gisha is ignoring the estimated 3 millions tons of concrete rubble already in Gaza that can be recycled and reused for many projects — though that 3 million tons presumably includes the 800,000 tons of concrete originally used to build Gaza’s terror tunnel network that Hamas claims is already being rebuilt.

In the article, Gisha mentions that not a single home from the 20,000 destroyed homes hasbeen rebuilt since the construction material was first allowed back in.

But it is not clear who exactly Gisha is criticizing for that, or what they are implying.

So where did the concrete go?

An Israel Channel 2 reporter spoke with Gazans in December, and they said they haven’t seen any private reconstruction going on, only some main roads.

Based on the international mechanisms that were set up between the UN, Israel and the PA, every individual Gazan whose home was damaged need only fill out a form and they will receive the building materials they need to rebuild.

And yet the left-wing organization Gisha divulges that not a single new home has been rebuilt, despite nearly 35 tons and 722 trucks of construction material being brought in specifically for that purpose.

The Channel 2 reporter asked the Gazans about the construction material they were supposed to receive, and one Gazan in the construction business told him that the Gazans are reselling all their building materials on the black market to buy food and supplies – even though organizations like UNRWA supposedly supply them with the basics.

He claims that individual Gazans can’t afford to rebuild their homes, even after being given all the raw materials for free.

Which brings us back full circle, with one basic question.

Israel is allowing in building materials, more than enough for the Gazans to be rebuilding their homes.

There is enough recyclable construction material in Gaza to last them for years.

Individual Gazans are selling their construction material on the black market (to someone).

Despite the presence of international organizations who are supposed to be in Gaza helping them rebuild and ensuring that building materials do not go to Hamas, no one actually sees any help from them in rebuilding their homes, other than providing them raw material which they resell, presumably to Hamas.

Despite the multiplicity of NGOs supposedly concerned with Gaza, none of those NGOs seem to be helping the Gazans physically rebuild.

Despite having all the raw materials and the manpower, no one in Gaza is helping one another rebuild their homes, and certainly Hamas and the PA, their own government(s), isn’t helping either.

Which leaves us with one question: how many terror tunnels is Hamas currently rebuilding with all the redirected construction materials?

The Hamas organization accepted responsibility on Sunday for the digging of the “terror tunnel” exposed by the IDF a week and a half ago in the area between Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha and the Gaza Strip border.

It turns out the Hamas has a “military arm,” which is responsible for doing the bad things, while the “civilian arm” continues to receive donations from the nice folks in Europe. This way they make sure that the money donated to Hamas is only used to feed orphans and widows, all of them 100 percent victims of Israeli genocide.

On Sunday, a spokesman for the bad Hamas, a gentleman nicknamed Abu Ubaida, after a medieval Muslim language scholar (on account of the talking, you get it, right?), told the Hamas radio station in Gaza that the Hamas military force “dug the tunnel and were responsible for it.”

Abu Ubaida stated that the tunnel was dug in an attempt to kidnap an Israeli soldier or civilian, and use them to force Israel to release the remaining thousands of Palestinian prisoners in its jails.

Israel has established many times in the past that not only is it happy to negotiate with terrorist, but that it’s willing to give away the story. The going rate for 1,000 jailed Arabs is one captured Israeli.

In 2011, 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, who were collectively responsible for 569 Israeli deaths, were released in exchange for Gilad Shalit. The campaign to release him (see the girls below painting his portrait on the pavement) reassured Hamas that they don’t need to ever give up anything in negotiations, or recognize, not even on paper, the Jews’ right to live. All they need is to get them a succulent Israeli with good, middle class parents.

It should be noted that the IDF blamed Hamas for the tunnel as soon as it was discovered. It also blamed winter for rain, and summer for those long, hot days in August.

It should also be noted that the tunnel required some 500 tons of cement, which was produced in Israel and provided to the Arabs in Gaza for the explicit purpose of rebuilding their neighborhoods following the 2012 Operation Pillar of Defense.

It appears that the Arabs went ahead and used that precious cement to aggressive ends, rather than to construct their homes. In fact, the IDF estimated that an astounding 20% of Hamas’s annual budget goes into building terror tunnels.

This is astonishing, in light of the fact that they’ve never done anything like that before, and no one in Israel could have imagined this kind of treachery. This is a moral failure on the part of the bad Hams, and we certainly hope the good Hamas will give them a sound rebuke!

The tunnel, incidentally, was 45 feet deep in places, and looks like a mini subway tunnel, complete with a track and a small car that could be used to whisk away the kidnapped soldier, even as his or her parents are being called and urged to start organizing a mass grassroots movement to release a thousand murderers.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu congratulated the IDF for the discovery, saying it’s all part of Israel’s new, aggressive security policy, which is the reason why we’ve had the “quietest year in a decade” in Gaza, despite the rise in terrorist activity in recent years.

Of course, it could be that the reason the Arabs have been so quiet is that they’re all underground, digging up tunnels.

It’s interesting to note that the Egyptian Army has found a very effective way of securing its own border with the Gaza Strip: they caved in all the tunnels with bulldozers, then used the same bulldozers to raze a swath of several kilometers worth of buildings, creating a no man’s area where Arabs who dare to enter will be shot.

Could we contract the same Egyptians to fix our Gaza problem?

The Gaza terror tunnel uncovered last week was built using an estimated 500 tons of concrete and cement, including 24,000 concrete slabs that Israel permitted into Gaza.

The tunnel took 2 years to build, and apparently wasn’t yet completed. It started in Absan al-Zarir, east of Khan Yunis in Gaza, and had exits within the fence of Kibbutz Ein HaShlosha in a wheat field.

The tunnel’s length was approximately a mile long, and was located around 18 meters underground.

The Gazans laid electrical and cable wire along the length of the tunnel.

The Gaza terror tunnel uncovered last week, was built with cement supplied by Israel, according to Reshet Bet.

The tunnel was built 18 meters underground using 500 tons of cement and concrete. It was dug over a 2 year period. It’s the third such tunnel uncovered this year.

In the past, as Hamas was using cement and steel to build reinforced bunkers and terror tunnels, in 2007 Israel restricted the flow of these materials primarily to humanitarian projects generally overseen or requested by international humanitarian organizations, often using European Union funding.

Following EU, UN, and international pressure, as well as official requests by the Palestinian Authority, Israel eased some of the restrictions on cement and iron imports.

But Hamas has apparently been diverting the cement and steel from various projects to build their latest mile and a half long terror tunnel which reached into Kibbutz Ein HaShlosha.

500 tons of cement and concrete is approximately 27 truckloads.

Whether the international organizations knew about the diversion is something that should be investigated.

An anonymous security source said that Raed al Atar, the head of Hamas’s military wing was responsible for this particular terror tunnel. Defense Minister Yaalon temporarily halted the transfer of building materials into Gaza this weekend.

In September, Amir Oren, spokesman for the radical leftwing Israeli NGO Gisha, complained to AFP about the amount of cement Israel was letting in. He said, “It doesn’t make up for the amount which came through the tunnels to Gaza in the first half of the year when they were in regular operation.”

Draw your own conclusions.