According to an AP report from Gaza today, “Israel allows in 10 basic items — cooking oil, salt, rice, sugar, wheat, dairy products, frozen vegetables, frozen meat, medical equipment and medicine”.
The report says that “The backdrop to the latest explosion of violence in the Gaza Strip: skeletons of unfinished apartment towers, shuttered factories, empty store shelves and skyrocketing prices for bread and cigarettes … Economic decline has been rapid since Hamas seized Gaza by force in June and Israel closed the territory’s borders in an unprecedented lockdown. Most factories have closed, tens of thousands lost their jobs and exports and most imports are frozen. Roughly 75 percent of the 1.5 million Gazans now live in poverty, up more than 10 points from the summer, according to Palestinian government officials in the West Bank … Gazans say they are down to their last reserves”.
The AP story adds: “Supermarket owner Mohammed Abu Sultan, 30, has only two boxes of candles left, so his customers in the Shati refugee camp will soon have to sit in the dark during frequent power outages. He’s also low on cleaning products, diapers and sugar substitutes for diabetics. ‘By the end of the month, we will have sold everything’, he said … [T]he gray skeletons of eight unfinished apartment towers stand near the beach, wind blowing through the holes where windows should be. The apartments, 40 per tower, have already been sold, but the tenants can’t move in and are now paying double — a mortgage for the new homes and rent for the apartments where they live now. Construction sites across Gaza have shut down because of lack of raw materials, mainly cement, and contractors have laid off 35,000 laborers”.
The AP report on economic woes in Gaza is here.