Saudi Awwal Bank inaugurates Prince Faisal bin Mishaal Centre for Native Plant Conservation and Propagation in partnership with Environmental Awareness Society    Saudi Ambassador to Ukraine presents credentials to President Zelenskyy    Cabinet underscores Saudi Arabia's significant progress in all fields    Viewing and printing vehicle data is now possible through Absher    Individual investment portfolios in Saudi stock market grows 12% to 12.7 million during 3Q 2024    Five things everyone should know about smoking    Israel confirms it killed Hamas leader Haniyeh in Tehran    Kosovo bars Serb party from vote over anti-independence stances    Russian forces make progress amid record-high losses across Ukraine's Donetsk region    Greenland again tells Trump it is not for sale    Emir of Madinah launches first phase of Madinah Gate project worth SR600 million    Saudi Arabia starts Gulf Cup 26 campaign with a disappointing loss to Bahrain    Gulf Cup: Hervé Renard calls for Saudi players to show pride    Oman optimistic about Al-Yahyaei's return for crucial Gulf Cup clash with Qatar    Qatar coach Garcia promises surprises as they seek first Gulf Cup 26 win    Abdullah Kamel unveils plans to launch halal certificate similar to ISO Value of global halal market exceeds $2 trillion    Do cigarettes belong in a museum    Marianne Jean-Baptiste on Oscars buzz for playing 'difficult' woman    PDC collaboration with MEDLOG Saudi to introduce new cold storage facilities in King Abdullah Port Investment of SR300 million to enhance logistics capabilities in Saudi Arabia    My kids saw my pain on set, says Angelina Jolie    Order vs. Morality: Lessons from New York's 1977 Blackout    India puts blockbuster Pakistani film on hold    The Vikings and the Islamic world    Filipino pilgrim's incredible evolution from an enemy of Islam to its staunch advocate    Exotic Taif Roses Simulation Performed at Taif Rose Festival    Asian shares mixed Tuesday    Weather Forecast for Tuesday    Saudi Tourism Authority Participates in Arabian Travel Market Exhibition in Dubai    Minister of Industry Announces 50 Investment Opportunities Worth over SAR 96 Billion in Machinery, Equipment Sector    HRH Crown Prince Offers Condolences to Crown Prince of Kuwait on Death of Sheikh Fawaz Salman Abdullah Al-Ali Al-Malek Al-Sabah    HRH Crown Prince Congratulates Santiago Peña on Winning Presidential Election in Paraguay    SDAIA Launches 1st Phase of 'Elevate Program' to Train 1,000 Women on Data, AI    41 Saudi Citizens and 171 Others from Brotherly and Friendly Countries Arrive in Saudi Arabia from Sudan    Saudi Arabia Hosts 1st Meeting of Arab Authorities Controlling Medicines    General Directorate of Narcotics Control Foils Attempt to Smuggle over 5 Million Amphetamine Pills    NAVI Javelins Crowned as Champions of Women's Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) Competitions    Saudi Karate Team Wins Four Medals in World Youth League Championship    Third Edition of FIFA Forward Program Kicks off in Riyadh    Evacuated from Sudan, 187 Nationals from Several Countries Arrive in Jeddah    SPA Documents Thajjud Prayer at Prophet's Mosque in Madinah    SFDA Recommends to Test Blood Sugar at Home Two or Three Hours after Meals    SFDA Offers Various Recommendations for Safe Food Frying    SFDA Provides Five Tips for Using Home Blood Pressure Monitor    SFDA: Instant Soup Contains Large Amounts of Salt    Mawani: New shipping service to connect Jubail Commercial Port to 11 global ports    Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Delivers Speech to Pilgrims, Citizens, Residents and Muslims around the World    Sheikh Al-Issa in Arafah's Sermon: Allaah Blessed You by Making It Easy for You to Carry out This Obligation. Thus, Ensure Following the Guidance of Your Prophet    Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques addresses citizens and all Muslims on the occasion of the Holy month of Ramadan    







Thank you for reporting!
This image will be automatically disabled when it gets reported by several people.



Cut off from the world, poverty consumes Gazans
Published in The Saudi Gazette on 19 - 04 - 2014

A Palestinian girl looks out from inside her family's house in the northern Gaza Strip. Seven years into an Israeli blockade and nine months into a crippling Egyptian one, Gaza's economic growth has evaporated and unemployment soared to almost 40 percent by the end of 2013. — Reuters
Israeli, Egyptian blockades see growth and jobs evaporate
• Many chafe at perceived ineptitude, carelessness of Hamas
Noah Browning and Nidal Al-Mughrabi
Life has never seemed so grim for the Mustafas, a family of seven cramped into a shabby two-room hovel in Gaza's Jabalya refugee camp.
Seven years into an Israeli blockade and ten months into a crippling Egyptian one, Gaza's economic growth has evaporated and unemployment soared to almost 40 percent by the end of 2013.
Opposition to the Hamas militant group which runs the Gaza Strip has led its neighbors to quarantine the enclave, shutting residents out of the struggling Mideast peace process and leaving them with plenty of parties to blame.
Living on UN handouts of rice, flour, canned meat and sunflower oil, with limited access to proper health care or clean water, families like the Mustafas — seemingly permanent refugees from ancestral lands now part of Israel — have no money, no jobs and no hope.
“We're drowning... We feel like the whole world is on top of us. I turn on the television and I see the lifestyles on there, and I think, God help me leave this place,” said Tareq, 22.
The Mustafas often must pick up and move when rain floods their low-lying home — even on a sunny day, it's lined with slick, smelly mildew. They stand in the dark, as 12-hour power cuts are now the norm throughout Gaza due to scant fuel.
“There's no money for university or to get married. There's not even enough to spend outside the house so we can escape a little. What kind of life is this?” Tareq asks.
Well over half of Gaza residents receive food from the United Nations, and the number is on the rise.
UNRWA, the UN Refugee Works Agency devoted to feeding and housing the refugees, told Reuters it was now feeding some 820,000, up by 40,000 in the last year. The UN's World Food Program (WFP) gives food aid to some 180,000 other residents.
Shock to the population
More than 1.2 of 1.8 the million Gazans are refugees or their descendants who fled or were driven from land that became part of Israel in the war of its foundation in 1948.
As decades passed, the hand of occupation variously clenched or relaxed through wars and uprisings. Groups of tents slowly morphed into concrete ghettos — eight camps in total — where chances for change feel as narrow as the claustrophobic alleys.
“Gaza just seems to keep descending further into poverty and de-development of the economy,” said Scott Anderson, deputy director of operations at UNRWA, noting that the level of aid dependency faced by Gaza has few parallels in the world.
“In terms of economic shock to a population, probably somewhere like Sierra Leone might be the only place where people experience what the people of Gaza experience on a daily basis,” he told Reuters. The crisis is pulling down the Strip's most vulnerable, not just among its poor but also its sick. While basic health and economic indicators outstrip much of Africa, the rising level of aid dependency and sense of confinement takes a constant toll.
Cancer struggles
Eman Shannan, who runs a support group for cancer patients and writes about Gaza life, told Reuters that treatment for the disease has been rendered agonizing by travel curbs at the Egyptian border, a lack of medicine and careless officialdom.
“We are headed for disaster. Five new cases come into the office every day... Cancer doesn't kill as much as the circumstances around us do. People can survive cancer, but not this,” said Shannan, herself a survivor.
There are 13,000 sufferers in the Strip and it is the second highest cause of death among Palestinians after heart disease.
Farha Al-Fayyumi, a breast cancer patient from the Shuja'iya refugee camp in central Gaza complains that her teeth are throbbing — medicines used to offset the effects of her years of chemotherapy treatments are not available in Gaza.
Once the a main conduit for Gazans seeking treatment abroad, the crossing with neighboring Egypt is now only open to people, including the sick, around two days each month. More and more, poverty is also staunching the flow.
“I haven't been to Egypt for treatment for a year and a half. I can't afford the travel expenses,” said Al-Fayyoumi, a widow with eight children clad in a head-to-toe black niqab body cloak.
Treatment in Gaza was rendered harder by the 1993 Oslo interim peace accords because radiation chemotherapy, the two sides agreed, could have military applications. Only five practicing oncologists remain in Gaza, Shannan notes with gloom.
Hamas blamed
In northern Gaza's green farmland, Mahmoud blames Hamas for much of the suffering. “Do things ever change for their gang? If jobs open up, their people get them. They never suffer,” said the 23-year-old, who studied to be an electrician, then a truck driver, but found work as neither.
Hamas denies corruption and says it governs transparently, mostly blaming Israel for the Strip's economic woes.
Mahmoud's father, a farmer, sits in a flowing brown robe and rests his cane over his knees in a sunny enclosure next to his family house.
The 67-year-old remembers the orchards in his 180,000 sq. meters of land astride Israel's border where olives, lemons and oranges once thrived in the area's sweet well water.
Long since demolished by Israeli bulldozers amid cross-border violence in 2008, the orchard lives on only in his small garden. In it stands one of every type of tree he used to tend — a reminder of what he's lost and of the steady erosion of land and livelihoods that Palestinians have endured over the decades.
Contamination of the aquifer means the family's water is now brackish and undrinkable. Like many Gazans, they pay to have it filtered.
“When they closed the land, life ended.” he sighed. “We used to sell the fruit of our trees, now we buy from Egypt and Israel, but only when we can afford it.”
Grumbling at their leaders' perceived incompetence is common among residents, but many said Gazans would remain behind Hamas because of its militancy.
“The whole world is against them. They're not angels of course. They've made a lot of mistakes. But if they went ahead and recognized Israel, the people here would spit on them — their popularity would evaporate overnight,” said Zakaria Shurafa, a driver picking up his family's ration of UN food aid at a busy distribution centre by the Beach Refugee camp.
“I don't see any possibility of a revolt, though I'm sure Israel's blockade is trying at that ... it's no use, we're used to this kind of life.”
Mahmoud, the jobless youth, lamented how the economic deadlock was dragging down society, and his dreams of what he could accomplish.
“In conditions like this, you feel people's hatred grow, their jealousy of each other grow. Young people take tramadol (drugs), there's robbery. These things didn't use to happen,” he said.
“When you're young you think that, as an adult, you will be able to do more, that the world will become more open to you. But here, we found that as we grew older, our problems only grew.” — Reuters


Clic here to read the story from its source.