Goods trickle through Gaza crossing, but at a price
Source: Reuters
By Adam Entous KARNI, Gaza Strip, March 7 (Reuters) - The most expensive shipping route in the world may be the 40 km (24 mile) stretch of road between the Israeli port of Ashdod and the Gaza Strip. Importers say they have been forced to pay Israeli truck drivers and some Palestinian middlemen as much as $7,100 -- 10 times the normal rate -- to get a load of goods from Ashdod to Gaza through the main commercial crossing at Karni. Shipping the same container to Ashdod from Shanghai, a journey of 7,368 nautical miles, or from Los Angeles, a distance of 9,281 nautical miles, costs them $2,000 to $3,000. Coca-Cola Co.'s sole producer and distributor in the Palestinian territories says the cost per kilometre to Karni was now greater than anywhere else in the soft drink giant's distribution chain, including war-torn Iraq. "It's easier to get into heaven than to get into Gaza," said Zahi Khouri, whose National Beverage Company holds the Coca-Cola licence. Limited operating hours, a backlog of containers waiting to go through, security concerns and corruption are to blame for the skyrocketing prices, Israeli and Palestinian officials, Western diplomats and importers said in interviews. Sari Bashi, executive director of the Israeli human rights group Gisha, said the bottleneck has driven up prices paid by consumers in Gaza by 25 percent, punishing already impoverished residents of the coastal strip. "We're talking about the basics. You want to make a bottle of milk for your baby, you need bottled water and milk powder. The consumer suffers," said Nasser el-Helo, whose Gaza-based import business brings in both products. The 1.5 million residents of Gaza may be the ultimate captive market. Imports are not permitted by air, sea or the border with Egypt. Only goods arriving first in Israel and inspected there can be brought in, mostly through the vast concrete and steel border post at Karni. Bashi said there is a three-month waiting period for containers to get through, in large part because Israel kept the crossing open an average of 5.5 hours a day from July to December, far short of the 14 hours per day that was envisioned. Israeli and Palestinian officials say there has been some improvement in hours in recent months but the number of truckloads entering through Karni fluctuates: 8,307 in December; 10,526 in January and 8,972 in February. To ease the crunch at Karni, the World Bank has proposed opening the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt to imports and exports. Egyptian seaports, airports and the Suez Canal would be used to move goods in and out under the proposal. FEW OTHER OPTIONS Importers wanting to bring goods through Karni are supposed to be able to obtain a shipment "slot" by calling a reservation line run by a government contractor in Israel. But the turns in the queue are reserved by truck drivers in advance, and are then sold to the highest bidder. Faysal Shawa, who owns a Gaza construction company, said Palestinian importers have little choice. "If one does not pay, he or she is forced to wait two or three months to receive the goods," Shawa said in an affidavit to the Israeli Supreme Court. A proposal to lower prices by negotiating fixed contracts with a select group of companies has run into opposition from the drivers who are profiting under the current system. Abdel Hakim Hassoun, whose company owns nine trucks, blamed what he called "the Israeli driver mafia". A spokesman for the Israel Airports Authority, which controls border crossings, said the drivers who sell the slots were like scalpers selling "tickets to a sold out concert". "We condemn the phenomenon but we can't do anything to stop it. It's out of our jurisdiction," the spokesman said. The Israeli army and police said they also do not have jurisdiction. Multinational companies with factories and warehouses in the occupied West Bank say they are no better off than small importers. Khouri said he pays up to $4,700 to bring a truckload of Coca-Cola through Karni, triple the cost of bringing the same load to the West Bank from Britain. "It's the most expensive (shipment), per kilometre, in the world," he said of Karni. El-Helo says he pays $1,000 to $1,300 to bring a container of milk powder from the Netherlands to Ashdod, then $5,000 for the short haul to Karni, forcing him to increase prices 10 percent. He stopped shipping bottled water from Egypt because $5,000 to enter Karni was greater than the $3,000 worth of water he can load on a container. The price per bottle would have to double. In contrast, Israel's largest foodmaker, Tnuva, has its own trucks and its prices haven't changed, the company's agent in Gaza, Haled Saeed al-Wadiya, said. Mazen Sonnoqrot, a Palestinian entrepreneur and former economy minister, said the system was unjust. "We talked to (British Prime Minister) Tony Blair... We talked to (U.S. Secretary of State) Condoleezza Rice. Nothing is happening." (Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi)
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