Palestinian smugglers are now importing... fried chicken

Tunneling beneath the border separating Egypt and the Gaza strip, Palestinian smugglers work to bring all sorts of things from one side to the other -- from livestock to home appliances, to vehicles and dangerous weapons.

As the Christian Science Monitor reports, such smuggling even extends to so-called "Kentaki" fried chicken:

(Image: Facebook)

For six years, Rafat Shororo longed for the taste of a KFC sandwich he had eaten in Egypt. This week, he got his finger lickin' fix at home in the Gaza Strip after a local delivery company managed to smuggle it from Egypt through underground tunnels.

"It has been a dream, and this company has made my dream come true," says Mr. Shororo, an accountant, as he receives his order from the delivery guy.

The al-Yamama company advertises its unorthodox new fast-food smuggling service on Facebook. It gets tens of orders a week for KFC meals despite having to triple the price to 100 shekels ($30) to cover transportation and smuggling fees. The deliveries go from the fryers at the Al-Arish KFC joint 35 miles away to customers' doorsteps in about three hours.

The fact that the tunnels operate quickly and cheaply enough for the Colonel’s secret recipe to be enjoyed in the tightly controlled Gaza Strip shows just how much of a sieve the Egypt-Gaza border has become.

"All you need to have any KFC product is a short phone call and a few hours, then you can enjoy the great taste of fried chickens," says Shororo, checking over his chicken pieces, salads, and apple pies. Like other customers who are acquainted with KFC from their travels abroad, he says he doesn’t care how much it costs. “I just want it.”

Enterprising Palestinians have even started advertising their chicken-delivery services on Facebook:

Hundreds of these underground tunnels are meant to bypass an Israeli blockade.  Despite Israel's attempts to relax the Gaza embargo, the black-market chicken is apparently still a hot item to get your hands on.