Delivered in three hours, or …

Maybe four. Five if Gaza gunmen interfere.

(ANSAmed) — GAZA, MAY 16 — A growing number of Gazans have been ordering Kentucky Fried Chicken takeaway meals from Egypt’s northern Sinai over the past few weeks.

The ‘fast food’ is smuggled through tunnels crossing into Gaza from Egypt’s Sinai, tunnels previously used as supply lines for weapons, explosives and munitions trafficking. Now they are instead employed to bring a whiff of Western lifestyles to Gazans, in the shape of buckets teeming with KFC delicacies. A Gaza-based company specialising in delivery services, Al-Yamama, hit on the idea in early May. It calculated that it would take about four hours to get the precious buckets of fried chicken from the nearest KFC fast food joint in Al Arish to Gaza’s urban areas. For security reasons, night deliveries are not offered. The issue of prices was dealt with next. A sit-down KFC meal in Al Arish will set the customer back some three euros, but the relay over desert routes, through tunnels with their requisite tolls and the sending of the buckets to inside of Gaza results in a price six times higher than its original. Al Yamama initially wondered whether there would really be enough demand to justify the service. A bit of word-of-mouth and television ads did the trick.

Orders started rolling in, with Gazans “hungry for a sense of normality”. For security reasons, none of the large international fast food chains (such as McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and Dominos) has an outlet in the Gaza Strip. And so the chance to sink one’s teeth into the famous KFC ‘finger-lickin’ good’ chicken worked its magic on many a family in Gaza — even if by paying such a hefty price they could instead treat themselves to a more refined dining experience in one of the city’s best restaurants. And so, with the entrance of KFC buckets has come a bit of reprieve from the strict lifestyle Hamas has imposed on Gaza. No local politician has yet spoken out against the service, and some say that among them there may even be fans of the tasty American-style morsels.

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