LOADED UP: Palestinians returning to Gaza from Egypt with their shopping after crossing the breached border this month. -- PHOTO: REUTERS

In an interview before US President George W. Bush visited Cairo this month, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit accused Israel of 'sowing disharmony' between Cairo and Washington by encouraging Congress to withhold US$100 million (S$142 million) in military aid to Egypt.

Israel had claimed that Cairo was not doing enough to control smuggling between Gaza and Egypt via the Rafah border crossing.

Mr Aboul Gheit denied relations between Cairo and Washington were tense as a result. But he did concede that 'Israel has succeeded in inciting the US Congress, and not the US administration, by putting some sticks in the wheels of this relationship'.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told a parliamentary committee at home that Egypt's failure to stop arms smuggling across its border with Gaza risked strengthening Hamas' hold over Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah, which is backed by Israel and the West.

Of course, Ms Livni was placating her domestic support base, as exemplified in an editorial in the right-wing Jerusalem Post that said Egypt had 'flagrantly violated' agreements and was guilty of 'scandalous' behaviour.

SMUGGLER'S FOE If the smugglers are to be believed, Hamas is actually bad news for cross-border arms smuggling since - albeit inadvertently - the organisation has done more than Israel and Egypt combined to stop the trade.

'If anything, our leaders have not spoken out early and forcefully enough on this issue,' thundered the influential daily. These accusations were being hurled even before Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak took credit for opening up the Rafah border, which Israel interpreted as an act of treachery.

But consider Mr Mubarak's own predicament.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had already publicly urged Egypt to do more to stop arms smuggling into the Gaza Strip, saying Washington was ready to help Cairo tackle the problem. Mr Mubarak responded by agreeing to work with American trainers and to spend US$23 million of US military aid on technical equipment to detect the tunnels used for smuggling.

By doing this, Mr Mubarak averted the freezing of the whole US$100 million package. But by then opening up the border, or at least not deploying the Egyptian army to quickly reseal it after its breach by the Palestinians, he cleverly made the pact irrelevant, at least in the short term: the immediate issue being how to deal with the half a million Palestinians carrying goods back into Gaza in the full glare of the world's media.

The mass human migration shifted the focus from arms smuggling to the human catastrophe that has befallen the people of Gaza as a result of Israel's ongoing blockade. For the first time since anyone can remember, Mr Mubarak could take credit for a government initiative that was genuinely popular among the Egyptian masses.

This story may sound like just another normal day's business in the Middle East. But that isn't nearly the half of it. The chief problem for both Egypt and Israel is that the smuggling takes place in an area where neither country has much control.

Before taking credit for opening up the border for humanitarian reasons, Mr Mubarak was justified in claiming that he had done all he could to prevent the smuggling of arms. Indeed, no one can accuse the Egyptian regime of not doing everything in its power for the past five decades to crack down on the people who live in the border area: the Bedouins of the Sinai Peninsula.

For complex reasons, chief among which is a deep distrust of their loyalties, the Egyptian regime treats the 300,000 or so Bedouins as a nuisance. Cairo has seen to it that the tourist boom in the area has no benefits for the local Bedouin population.

These originally nomadic Arabs are banned from jobs even as tourist guides, forcing some to resort to smuggling goods, including arms, through tunnels they have dug under the border.

After the devastating bomb attacks on Sinai tourist resorts between 2004 and 2006, thousands of Bedouins accused (at that time by Cairo) of having smuggled the weapons used were summarily rounded up and thrown in Egypt's jails. Many are still imprisoned.

Earlier this month, dozens of Bedouin tribesmen, some firing rocket-propelled grenades, attacked Egypt's Al-Oja crossing point into Israel. Al-Oja lies just south-east of the Rafah crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. The tribesmen were protesting against the arrest of two of their number, in what was the latest in a string of violent - and futile - protests by them against discrimination and mistreatment by the authorities.

Egyptian security forces later retook control of the crossing point, which was damaged in the attack, and the situation at the border returned to normal. The incident, though, underscored how Egypt likes the smugglers no more than Israel does. The government-controlled press in Egypt regularly accuses the Bedouins of being Israeli stooges.

The problem would seem to be one where the interests of Israel and Egypt are in perfect harmony. And Mr Mubarak also shares Ms Livni's loathing of the beneficiaries of smuggling, namely Hamas. The militant group that, to Israel's and the Western world's dismay, controls Gaza is after all a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, the granddaddy of all Islamist groups.

The Brotherhood has been a thorn in Cairo's side for decades and is officially banned in Egypt. The last thing the secular Egyptian military regime wants is to strengthen the pious fraternity with deliveries of weapons.

But the issue is not so clear-cut.

Before the metal fence that marked the Egyptian border with Gaza was blown apart, the Christian Science Monitor challenged the assumptions behind the clamour with a powerful dispatch from Rafah.

It is by no means clear, the article pointed out, how many weapons are smuggled through the tunnels. Most of their business, the smugglers told the newspaper, was in cigarettes and Viagra.

'We're businessmen,' one of the Gazan smugglers was quoted as saying. 'When guns are selling, we bring guns. These days, it's mostly cigarettes. A month ago we brought in a load of cheese.'

Smuggling kingpin Abu Mohammed 'snorted out a laugh' when asked whether he was worried by the sudden spotlight on the tunnels.

Still, he and other Gazan smugglers say they miss the days before Hamas routed the Fatah movement. Competition between the two Palestinian factions at that time fuelled a brisk trade in small arms, with AK-47s bought from weapons dealers in Egypt for US$400 changing hands for US$800 or more. But now, the bottom has fallen out of the weapons market.

So if the smugglers are to be believed, Hamas is actually bad news for cross-border arms smuggling since - albeit inadvertently - the organisation has done more than Israel and Egypt combined to stop the trade.

But the real irony is that while Mr Mubarak infuriated Tel Aviv by allowing into Egypt so many Palestinians after the border fence was blown up, with that single act he probably did more to undermine the business interests of the underground smugglers than anyone ever has.

Unfortunately, given the endless round of political point-scoring, the main underlying issue will likely remain unaddressed: Neither Israel nor Egypt can stop a nomadic people so marginalised and disenfranchised that they eke out a living by smuggling goods and arms in a region no country has any real control over.

jbradley@sph.com.sg