Anonymity was his weapon as much as the big tractor.

Israeli police knew the name of Hassam Taiseer Dwyatt only because of his criminal past.  He lived in East Jerusalem, came and went as he pleased, crossed no checkpoints and carried an Israeli ID.  No one had any reason to stop him and there is no point where he would have been stopped.  Since he worked at the construction site adjacent to my office, I may very well have passed him on the street and paid him no mind.

That’s why no one had their guard up when he climbed behind the controls of the massive caterpillar front-end loader, started crushing cars and ending lives. We still don’t know what set him off. He may have just been a disgruntled employee.  He may have been dispatched by one of the deadly Palestinian organizations.  He may have acted purely on his own personal hatred. It may be a combination. But because no one was prepared to defend against rampaging heavy equipment, he was able to cut a path of destruction about a quarter mile long before Israeli police officers climbed up to the cockpit of the big rig and wrestled him to a temporary stop.

Moshe Plesser, an 18 year old, off duty soldier hung on the side of the cockpit behind the police officers.  Again unexpectedly, Dwyatt hit the gas.  As the bloodshed and destruction started again, Plesser, with the calm and professionalism of a seasoned combat veteran, took a gun from one of the police officers, reached over their heads and fired the fatal shots that ended the rampage.

There hasn’t been an attack in Jerusalem since March.  The combination of advanced intelligence work and the wall/fence surrounding the West Bank have stopped all but one bomber, who attacked last February in the town of Dimona. It is not for a lack of effort. Israeli security forces intercept bombs and bomb plots on a near daily basis.  They have the Palestinian groups and the general population infiltrated with collaborators. When the plots hatch, they stop them, either in the headquarters, or attempting to cross out of the West Bank.  Dwiyat was able to kill and injure so many, simply because no one would have paid any attention to him. No one saw an attack like this coming.

This wasn’t my first time in the Gaza smuggling tunnels. Back when the Fatah led Palestinian Authority still controlled the Gaza strip, the police (controlled by Fatah) made an effort to combat the smuggling. So, I had a chance to explore a tunnel after it had been discovered and shut down.

That was more than a year ago. This time, I got into a tunnel that was still active. Smuggling has become a cottage industry on the Gaza/Egypt border. Two factors are causing the business to boom: 1) Hamas benefits from the smuggling and therefore does not stop it. 2) Since Israel has sealed the borders around the Gaza strip, people there need everything from bullets to bandages and boots and the smugglers deliver.

Contacts led me into what looked like a tent city in the no-man’s land on the border with Egypt. Once, inside I realized that each of the tents concealed the entrance to a tunnel. The top of the tunnel looked like a water well. Sandbags at the top kept the sand from eroding and collapsing the entrance to the tunnel. A metal structure held a pulley over the center of the hole. A thin steel cable ran through the pulley. One end was attached to an electric winch. The other hooked to a makeshift boson’s chair in which I sat then swung out over the tunnel. There was a light at the bottom allowing me to see 90 feet down into the desert. The splintered steel cable didn’t give me much confidence but I was committed at that point. A man with a Palestinian kafiyeh wrapped around his face hit the button on the electric winch, and down I went into the smugglers’ workspace. I sent the chair back up and cameraman Chris Jackson joined me.

With no one stopping the smuggling efforts, the tunnels have improved. They are big enough now that you can walk in them crouched over. They have electricity and lighting. There is a telephone and electric winch at each end of the tunnel. Instead of hauling goods across by hand, the smugglers just phone their collegues on the Egyptian side. They hook plastic barrels to the cables load the goods in them, hit the switch and the winches pull the goods under the border. This eliminates the risk of losing people in a tunnel collapse and speeds up the operation.

The smugglers themselves had a very mater-of-fact attitude. They didn’t see themselves as soldiers in the fight against Israel. They are just freelancers making a buck. Someone wants weapons, they’ll haul weapons. Someone wants diesel they’ll haul that as long as someone is paying. The way one of the smugglers put it to me, “There are no jobs on the ground. We have one choice; working in the tunnel to provide people with their needs and to make money.”

They are a complicating factor in the brutal politics of the Gaza strip. Israeli intelligence told Fox News, the smugglers haul tons of weapons, hundreds of thousands of bullets, thousands of guns, rocket propelled grenades and anti-tank rockets. Remember when President Bush was in

Israel a couple of weeks ago and the Popular Resistance Commitee fired a rocket out of Gaza that reached all the way to the Israeli town of Ashkelon? That was a medium-range rocket smuggled through these tunnels.

While Egypt attempts to mediate a cease-fire for the Gaza strip, Israel is demanding that something be done to combat the smugglers. But the smugglers don’t care. I asked one of them what he would do if his tunnel was discovered and destroyed. He said, “I’d dig another.” He then hooked a plastic barrel to the winch cable; ready to be hauled under the border. 

Check out my blog from yesterday for more photos!

On those mornings when I’ve only been afforded two hours of sleep, the first thing I attempt, when the alarm goes off, is problem solving; there must be some way I can accomplish everything I need to accomplish, yet stay in this bed for at least another hour. Therefore, on a morning like this, I fail at my first task of the day.

On this particular morning, I needed to meet my cameraman, Chris Jackson, at our office in Jerusalem, load up the gear, get through the stringent security at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv and fly to Amman, Jordan to begin the ground trek to Beirut. The difficulty in making the trip points out the cantankerous folly of man. As the missile flies, the trip from Jerusalem to Beirut would take about 5 hours by car. With Rafiq Hariri international airport in Beirut shut down by Hezbollah, a long series of border crossings and paranoid customs inspectors ahead of me, I was ambitiously betting on 18 hours.

So, we hooked up with a driver in Amman and headed for the Syrian border. At the crossing I found many of my contemporaries in the foreign press, the BBC, Canadian Broadcast Company, Swedish radio and a handful of newspaper reporters. Since I was the only one in the bunch who speaks Arabic, I ended up the translator. It still took hours to get visas and get through customs. It’s Ironic that the Syrians made the border so time-consuming; none of us had any interest in Syria. All we wanted was to cross over Syrian land and get to Lebanon where Hezbollah was making swift work of dominating the forces loyal to the government of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora.

Word was out that a roadblock of burning tires had severed the road, connecting Damascus to Beirut. So, our plan was to drive all the way around to the North of Lebanon, cross the border there and drive down through Tripoli. But the drivers, through their remarkable cell-phone, buddy network, passed word that the road through Tripoli had been blocked as well. We changed our plan and crossed into Lebanon between Damascus and Beirut.

Before we got to the Lebanese passport control, we could see the black smoke of burning tires rising up from the roadblock. Our driver could not take us any further, so Chris and I had to hand carry the gear. The job was made easier by the eager hands of young Lebanese boys who were more than happy to snatch up our gear and carry it around the roadblock in exchange for a buck or two. The gear was snatched up so quickly (and without us asking for help) my immediate concern was that gear would walk away in the chaos. Chris and I ran alongside trying to keep track of each piece. In the end the kids were honest. They were happy to get a dollar and all our gear arrived at the car.

Keep Reading …

Mike Tobin in the mountains south of Beirut; Mike Tobin holds up the remains of a shell during a live shot

Mike Tobin going live from the hills above Beirut; Mike Tobin and field producer Marcia Biggs look at a rocket shell

Keep Reading …

People often ask me if I get scared when reporting with gunmen from the different radical, armed Palestinian groups. Usually, I say “No,” but not this time.

You see, when I talk to guys from Hamas or the Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigades, it’s not in their interest to do me any harm. The risk, as it is on any controversial story, is getting spun or exploited.

EXCLUSIVE VIDEO!

This was different. Today I went to one of the clandestine rocket labs, where Palestinians make the deadly rockets they shoot at Israel. Dozens of times now, I’ve reported that one of these labs blew up. Sometimes they blow up because explosives were mishandled. Sometimes they blow up due to Israeli air strikes. The cause, however, is irrelevant to my concern: sometimes they blow up.

Rhetorical Question: Why take the risk?

Ever since the end of the second Lebanon war, the predominant story out of the Gaza strip has been the firing of homemade Palestinian rockets at Israeli civilians and soldiers and Israel’s response to the rocket fire. A part of this story that hadn’t made it to the American viewers was an up close look at the guys who won’t stop making the rockets and shooting them. One of the principals, which guides me through my career, is that the freedom of the press carries with it the burden of the press. The system works when reporters are willing to do what it takes to get every angle to the audience.

Good Guys? Bad Guys? That’s not for the messenger to decide. My job is just to get it to the viewers and let them decide.

Another Question: Did they stage a rocket launch just for our cameras?

Of course not. Those rockets kill people. I would never even consider being part of such a thing. The reality is that they are being fired at Israel every day. I just got the who, the how and the why of this deadly practice back to the audience.

The meeting in the Gaza strip was understandably, very cloak and dagger. The group we were meeting is the armed wing of the Popular Resistance Committee. They are loyal to Hamas and quite potent. They worked with Hamas in the kidnapping of the Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit. On tis day, they were nervous that I could be followed, their lab discovered and destroyed. When cameraman Chris Jackson and I got into the Gaza strip, our Gaza producer had been told a location where we were to drive, park on the street and wait until we were contacted.

We complied and parked in a busy Gaza neighborhood for about 20 minutes until, whoever was watching us, determined that we hadn’t been followed. A street vendor selling fruit got a cell phone call. He was an operative for the PRC. He turned around came to our truck and told us where to drive next. As we drove to the next spot, a man I recognized from a past encounter with the PRC, walked up to the car. He beckoned me to roll down my window. Then he reached his hand inside the truck took hold of the handle on the roof, stepped on the running board and told the driver another location.

That led us back into a grove of big trees near the heart of Gaza City. That’s where I met Abu Yousef, the man appointed to speak for the PRC rocket teams. The interview was pretty straightforward. Following that, I was taken to the location I’d been after for so long, the rocket lab.

It is indistinguishable from any other storefront location and surrounded by dense civilian population. That’s part of the cover and part of the defense. Still, I was on edge. I jumped at every noise. The rumble of a truck outside can sound a lot like an approaching helicopter, if you’re paranoid enough.

The lab was chaotic. The rocket makers were proudly showing off the different chemicals, which went into the rockets. Some propelled the rocket. TNT went into the warhead and was supplemented by steel pellets intended to act like a shotgun blast and tear into the flesh of anyone near the rocket’s impact. Some PRC members pulled out their stockpiles of mortar shells and roadside bombs. They were very proud to display the live ammo they had smuggled into the Gaza strip. But in the confusion of different guys, seeing poorly through the eyeholes of their black balaclavas, live rounds and mortar tubes were getting knocked over, adding to my apprehension. Ultimately, the warhead was screwed on to the body of the rocket and the PRC rocket team was ready for another launch.

Chris and I were loaded into a car again, along with one of the rocket makers. En route to the launch site he showed me how he had converted a disposable camera into the ignition for the rocket. A simple AA battery powered the Camera, the mechanism, which converted the electricity to power the flash, was used to generate the spark and that’s what ignites the propellant in the rockets.

The rocket team beckoned us to join the “Shaheeds” launching the rocket from an orchard near the border with Israel. “Shaheed” means martyr. I have no desire to join the martyrs or send my cameraman to join them. It’s in the interest of the Israeli Air Force to hit the rocket teams right before they launch, but the aircraft are more likely to get them immediately after the launch because the rocket gives up their location. One of them suggested that we set up a camera on a tri-pod and leave it. That would mean we’d have to come back and get the camera, forget it. It would have been good to tell the story from the launch up close, but there are some risks I just won’t take.

By the way, no one was injured when they fired the rocket, but that’s not for a lack of effort on the part of the PRC rocket team.