For residents of Gaza, ‘this isn’t a life’
Even when area isn’t embroiled in conflict, crowding, poverty, and political unrest keep conditions miserable
Mohamed Abu Haseera said he prefers war to the immense suffering he and other Palestinians endure during what passes as peacetime. “This isn’t a life,” said the father of six, a doctor at Gaza’s largest hospital.
Abu Haseera has worked through three wars against Israel in nine years, the most recent erupting three years ago this month. “This is the hardest stage,” he told USA TODAY. “And every day is harder. There are no prospects. It’s the opposite. Every day we wait for it to get worse.”
Gaza is crowded and povertystricken, and conditions have deteriorated even more this summer. The area’s woes are not only a consequence of repeated wars but also a power struggle among Palestinian leaders and a lack of support from neighboring countries for this desert strip’s 2 million residents.
Ten years ago, the militant group Hamas, labeled a terrorist organization by Israel and the United States, violently seized power over the territory, prompting Israel and Egypt to impose crippling travel and trade blockades. A dispute with the more moderate Palestinian Authority, which governs the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has left Gaza with barely any electricity, clean water or jobs.
The Mediterranean beach, one of the coastal enclave’s few escapes, is so polluted by sewage — which can’t be treated because of power shortages — that swimming isn’t safe, authorities have warned.
“We faced troubles like this be- fore during the last three wars, but this time it’s harder and more difficult,” said Ghazi Mushtaha, owner of an ice cream company.
For the first time during peace, Mushtaha, 71, has stopped production at his company, Eskimo El Arousa, because of rising costs and dwindling demand amid electricity blackouts. “There’s no horizon for controlling the crisis,” he said.
A United Nations report in July showed that conditions have become “more and more wretched” since Hamas seized Gaza in 2007. “Gaza has continued on its trajectory of de-development, in many cases faster than we had originally projected,” the report said. In 2015, the United Nations predicted that Gaza, which has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world, would be “uninhabitable” by 2020.
“Life needs to be breathed back into Gaza’s economy, and people need to be given some hope,” said Robert Piper, U.N. coordinator for Humanitarian Aid and Development Activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
U.N. reports give Abu Haseera little solace. “Unfortunately, we’ve lost our trust in everyone,” he said. “Not just the foreigners but also the Arabs.”
Gaza’s hastening deterioration began in mid-June, when Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, attempting to squeeze Hamas, cut payments to Israel for electricity it provided to Gaza. Israel agreed, and suddenly Gazans, who were already running on eight hours of power a day, were reduced to two or three hours in the summer heat. Earlier that month, Abbas cut the salaries of Fatah employees in Gaza and last week threatened to sanction some Hamas authorities.
Gazans have frequently faulted Israel, which occupied Gaza until 2005 and controls most land crossings into the blockaded strip. Israel says the blockade is necessary to keep Hamas from smuggling armaments in and out of the territory to attack Israel.
The United Nations said nearly 2,220 Palestinians, roughly 70% of them civilian, and 71 Israelis, including five civilians, died in the last war in 2014.
People openly blame their troubles on Abbas and the Hamas government, which imposes an extreme version of Islam and stifles dissent.
“They’ve ruined us,” Abu Haseera said of the two Palestinian governments. Part of his depression, he said, comes from knowing the people of Gaza have so much to offer.
When Hamas won a Palestinian legislative election in 2006, voters saw the group as less corrupt than Abbas’ Fatah Party. Now, people grumble about stifling taxes and corruption among Hamas authorities. “It’s become like a business,” Abu Haseera said.
Ashraf Ismail al Qadara, head of public relations at Gaza’s main hospital, accused the Palestinian Authority and Israel of increasingly denying patients in Gaza — including newborns in critical condition — emergency permits for care in the West Bank. In recent weeks, some have died as a result. Hospitals face acute medical shortages.
Gaza’s youth struggle just to breathe in the unrelenting heat.
Ahlam Abo Thaher, 25, has a bachelor’s degree in environmental engineering from Palestine University in Gaza. She’s one of many Palestinians in Gaza with a university degree, access to the outside world on the Internet and barriers at every turn.
She and a friend developed a way to produce asphalt from rubber in an environmentally friendly way to improve Gaza’s damaged roads.
People such as Abo Thaher have many such ideas to solve Gaza’s troubles but no financial or political support to make them happen. Instead, she said, only the politicians benefit from Gaza’s suffering.
“From companies or the government, unfortunately, no one’s given us money to make it (the invention) happen on the ground,” Abo Thaher said. “Remember, you are in Gaza.”