Poverty, unemployment skyrocket in Gaza Strip

Al Jazeera :

Crammed in a tiny tent at a United Nations-run school in central Gaza City, Alaa Alzanin, along with his wife, five children, his 71-year-old mother and younger sister, are taking shelter after they lost their home in Beit Hanoon during Israel’s war.

They have been displaced eight times, and this tent is where they now protect themselves from the rain and winter cold.

Alzanin, 41, cannot sustain his family because he is unemployed. He is a day labourer, but he is out of work like hundreds of thousands of people across the Gaza Strip.

“Now I have no work, I can’t provide for my family,” he told Al Jazeera, adding that he used to work in the infrastructure and farming sectors.

“I used to work with an axe to open water channels between the trees, plough the soil around them, spray pesticides, and plant tomatoes and cucumbers. I used to work from 7am to 4pm for 40–50 shekels [$13-$15] per day.”

Another man without income is Majed Hamouda. The 53-year-old from Jabalia, northern Gaza, has polio, and his wife is a thalassaemia carrier.

He has five children, and is sheltering at a camp in the Remal neighbourhood school.

He relies on financial aid from the Ministry of Development and on charity, as he can’t work due to his poor health. And since the war started, his aid payment has stopped.

“We are like dead people, but not buried yet, we only look at living people, yes, I swear. If someone destroyed your home and kicked you out to the streets like dogs, even dogs live better lives than ours,’’ Hamouda told Al Jazeera.

“The dog in the street, no one would kick it off, but we were [kicked out] and displaced in the streets,’’ he explained as one of his daughters started to cry.

On some days, the Hamouda family has nothing to eat, so the father asks his only son to collect plastics and rubbish from the streets to sell, so he can support his family.
“My little son Yaqoub was the first in the northern schools in fourth grade.

He won the prize of the Little Scientist from the Ministry of Education as he made eight successful scientific experiments for his age.

Now, I sorrowfully look at him collecting nylon to burn for cooking food and running after the hot meal deliveries in the camp. I sometimes cry watching him,” he explained.

“Now it’s become a dream to eat a tomato or a cucumber, and this is inhumane.”

After more than two years of war, Israel has almost totally destroyed the Gaza Strip, leaving it with a hunger crisis and widespread famine.

Supplies entering the besieged enclave are not meeting the nutritional needs of the people living there, the United Nations’ World Food Programme has said.

The aid entering the territory is way short of its daily target of 2,000 tonnes because only two crossings into the Palestinian territory are open, and Israel has restricted deliveries.

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics said in its report issued mid October that during Israel’s war the rate of unemployment in Palestine increased to 50 percent, and 80 percent in the Gaza Strip.

The bureau also said that there are 550 thousand unemployed people across Palestine.

A report by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said the Palestinian gross domestic product (GDP) had regressed to its 2010 level by the end of last year, while GDP per capita returned to levels seen in 2003, erasing 22 years of development in two years.

“Before the war, the Gaza Strip witnessed economic growth, with the opening of many commercial, tourism and industrial projects, and it became a haven for many investments in all sectors,” Maher Altabbaa, the director-general of the Gaza Governorate Chamber of Commerce and Industry, told Al Jazeera.

However, now the enclave’s GDP plunged 83 percent in 2024 compared with the previous year, with an 87 percent drop over two years to $362m. GDP per capita plummeted to $161, placing it among the lowest in the world.

Historically, the private sector in Gaza has been its largest economic engine, and it constitutes a large share of its GDP.

“It is the main driver in the Gaza Strip, where it used to contribute more than 52 percent of employment, relying on small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as the backbone,” explained Altabbaa, adding that the agricultural sector achieved self-sufficiency in many products, and the Gaza Strip contributed about 17 percent of the Palestinian GDP.

But the Strip’s economy was not great even before October 2023, since Israel imposed a land, sea and air blockade in 2007.

Some local Palestinian estimates put poverty levels at more than 63 percent of the population before this war, and the British government estimated that about 80 percent of the population was dependent on humanitarian assistance beforehand.

The government in Gaza estimates that 90 percent of all sectors, including housing and infrastructure have now been wiped out. But it said it has plans to fix the economy and create jobs – but that will depend on multiple factors.

“Supporting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as they are best positioned to absorb the workforce in the short term, and regulating the market and preventing monopolies resulting from import restrictions – which have led to sharp price distortions and high inflation rates – are among the urgent needs to fix the situation,” Ismail al-Thawabta, the head of the Gaza Government Media Office, told Al Jazeera, estimating that total losses to the economy amounted to $70bn.

“We aim at building productive projects, not just relief efforts, as well as temporary and emergency employment programmes targeting youths, graduates and affected workers … in addition to building an accurate economic database to support decision-making and the development of future economic policies,” he said.

That would require all the crossings between Israel and the Gaza Strip to reopen and allow the free entry of raw materials, production inputs, and spare parts without restrictions, he said.

“The key productive sectors [industry, agriculture and services] have to be re-established as the true path to job creation and reducing dependence on aid,” he said.

The ceasefire and peace plan by United States President Donald Trump is yet to be fully implemented by Israel, and the second phase of that plan remains unclear.

But what is clear is that Gaza has a challenge ahead to recover economically and rise from the ashes of war.

And as for Alzanin and his wife, Mariam, who is three months pregnant, they are now provided with some food but still have no income.

“We eat and feel full from the hot meals deliveries in the camp … but it’s not nutritious, we still want to eat food that we can’t afford,’’ Mariam told Al Jazeera.

“We see everything in the markets, but we can’t get everything for the children; they tell us we desire bananas, apples, fish, and eggs, we get tiny portions that are not enough, and only for them,” she says.

“I am pregnant, I need proper food and supplements, I am losing my teeth, there was no calcium in my food for two years. Alhamdulillah!”