GAZA (dpa) – One year after the start of the latest Palestinian uprising the population in Gaza is feeling the economic fallout.
It has not been so bad in decades. Only the Six Day War in 1967 was worse for the people living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, according to the head of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Gaza, Khaled Abdel-Shafi.
The percentage of people below the poverty line with a daily income of less than two dollars has risen from 30 to 50 per cent since the start of the unrest.
The uprising aimed at ending the Israeli occupation has been a political failure and has achieved nothing apart from worsening the economic situation of the people.
Visitors to the al-Balad market in Gaza can afford very little, with most unable to afford meat and fish.
“In the past we sold meat each day for 4,000 shekels (914 U.S. dollars) now it often is only for 500 shekels (114 dollars),” says staff butcher Ahmed Yuhle. He himself takes home 20 shekels (4.5 dollars) a day. He has to feed a wife, two sons and six daughters.
“The other half that I need to live from comes from God,” an ever-confident Yuhle says.
Many of the shoppers coming to the stall of the 37-year-old ask the price, try to negotiate a deal but then leave, sadly shaking their heads.
Since the Israelis closed their borders for Palestinian workers in fear of further terrorist onslaughts, the standard of living in the Palestinian areas has fallen dramatically.
In the past about 50,000 Palestinians crossed the narrow strip of land into Israel each day. Today there is no way they can pass the Erez border checkpoint.
The Gaza Strip with its 1.3 million people is regarded as the largest “open air prison in the world” with a dramatic rise in poverty, according to Abdel-Shafi. Because savings are rapidly being depleted parents have to send their children to go begging rather than going to school.
“Prior to the Intifada about 20 per cent of the people here were without a job, now it is more than half,” says Abdel-Shafi, whose organization has invested about 22 million dollars in a job creation scheme since October last year.
Because deliveries of all goods apart from food have been stopped by Israel, many jobs in Gaza, especially in the construction industry, have fallen away. Many jobs have also been lost in Israel, for instance in the tourist industry, but by far not with the same far-reaching consequences as in the Palestinian areas.
Some 65 per cent of households, many of them large families, have to survive on less than 1,300 shekels (297 dollars) a month, according to a survey conducted by the Palestinian Office of Statistics in June.
The average income in Gaza has fallen from 1,900 to 1,000 since the end of September.
The people living in the refugee camps established after the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948 have been especially hard hit. Some 75 per cent of the population in the camps live below the poverty line.
The depressed situation is visible on the streets in Gaza. Young bored men sit around on the sidewalks. Others try to earn a living as taxi drivers. Tourists are a rarity. They even avoided the area before the start of the Intifada.
Even the Palestinian Authority has to fear running out of money, according to Masem Anan, the deputy director of an organization of economic experts in Gaza. The Intifada has cost the economy in the Palestinian areas some 6 billion dollars, Anan estimates.
