Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has enacted a law to punish those convicted of digging tunnels on the country's border with life sentence that is 25 years. Under the law, those convicted of "digging or assisting in digging border tunnels with the aim of communicating with foreign sides or smuggling goods, equipment or individuals" should face 25 years in prison, the maximum prison sentence in the country's judicial system. Those found to have known about the existence or use of such tunnels and fail to report them to the authorities would face the same penalty. Egyptian authorities have been cracking down on a network of smuggling tunnels between Sinai and the Gaza Strip for several months now.

Egypt had initially planned to create a 500-meter wide buffer zone along the border with the Palestinian territory, before deciding to expand it to a kilometer. The clampdown brought to a halt tunnel digging activities in the Gaza Strip. Egypt says the tunnels are used in militant activities inside Sinai. Blockaded by Israel since 2007, Gaza used to receive much-needed supplies through the network of smuggling tunnels on its border with Sinai.

While Egypt restrict the influx of basic material to Gaza through closing the border and the tunnels, a coalition of international aid groups says the world must change its approach to war-ravaged Gaza, including by demanding a lifting of the blockade of the Hamas-ruled territory. The Association of International Development Agencies (AIDA) said Monday that reconstruction of thousands of homes and businesses destroyed in last summer's Israeli attacks on Hamas have barely begun and that donor countries have so far only released one-fourth of $3.5 billion in promised aid. The coalition calls for a "paradigm shift," urging the international community to pressure Israel to lift its border blockade. The report says a return to conflict, including "cycles of damage and donor-funded reconstruction," is inevitable with Gaza's economic, social and political instability.