OT: Drugged children forced to dig tunnels in Gaza….
Children in Gaza’s blockade-busting tunnels

Anwar, 15, can’t read or write, but says he’s good at tunnel work. He needs a new job as Israeli planes bombed his workplace, one of hundreds of smuggling tunnels on Gaza’s border with Egypt.

His rough voice and tough looks belie his young age, but his small, wiry body is what makes him a perfect candidate for the job.

And, like thousands of other children in the impoverished and war-shattered Gaza Strip, his family badly needs the money. The job is comparatively lucrative, with children getting up to 30 dollars for a 12-hour shift.

“I have six brothers. I’m the breadwinner for the family,” says Anwar.

He says he doesn’t mind not getting an education.

“School is useless.”

Asked about the Israeli offensive that killed more than 1,400 Palestinians and devastated Gaza, Anwar shrugs. “The worst thing about the war is that I spent all my savings from working the tunnels.”
….
Tunnel work is both dangerous and exhausting.

“I was in the middle of the tunnel. Egypt put some gas in. Three workers died, 18 were treated for suffocation,” says 14-year-old Osama.

“I decided not to go again, but my father died so I was forced to go back for about one month,” says Osama, who is spending much of the summer school holiday at a youth centre financed by the UN children’s agency UNICEF.

His 15-year-old friend Mohammed is adamant: “I won’t go back to the tunnels, it’s horrible in there.”

Hujaier says most of the children who work in the tunnels use Tramadol — also known as Tramal — a painkiller said to produce a mild high and to relieve anxiety.

For the families, he says there is no alternative to the child labour, they desperately need the money.

“When we tell parents ‘he’s just a kid and needs to enjoy his childhood’ they look at us like we come from the moon, they make us feel like we’re not being realistic.”