wildcard
1st May 2010, 08:08 PM
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2010-05/02/c_13275417.htm
Gaza workers struggle to survive amid siege, unemployment
by Sami el-Ajrami
GAZA, May 1 (Xinhua) -- Jawdat Abu Nahel, a 41-year-old Gaza resident, sat in a corner at the Unknown Soldiers Park in downtown Gaza city, where he spent 16 hours a day selling tea and coffee, after losing his job in Israel four years ago.
Abu Nahel lives in the Shatti (Beach) Refugee camp in the western part of the city, and has to provide for his family with seven children. He said he used to work in Israel in the field of construction, with a monthly pay of 6,000 shekels (about 1,613 U.S. dollars). "But now I live on the edge of financial collapse."
"When I worked in Israel, I managed to purchase a house near my parents, got married and had five daughters and two sons," said Abu Nahel.
Before Israel closed its borders to the Gaza Strip population, around 150,000 Palestinians used to work in Israel in different fields.
Since the second Intifada or Uprising erupted against Israel in late September 2000, Israel started a gradual ban of workers from Gaza to work in Israel. Since Hamas seized control of the enclave in 2007, all Gaza workers were driven out of Israel.
After he lost his job in Israel, Abu Nahel worked in a silvering workshop. However, he was obliged to leave this job after Israeli warplane missiles targeted these workshops, claiming that they helped militants in making homemade rockets that they fired at southern Israel.
Abu Nahel began to look for other sources of living, whatever the source is. He did not have the money to start even a small profitable business, so he began to sell hot drinks to drivers and storekeepers on the road.
Every morning, he left his 3-room apartment, with an Asbestos ceiling, his primitive tools and a bag full of tea, coffee and sugar, hoping that his upcoming day would be better than the previous ones.
He got back home late at night, finding his children asleep. He went to sleep, thinking all the time how he can keep his children surviving. He never took a day off, and worked seven days a week.
"Sometimes I borrowed money from friends and relatives to buy tea, sugar and coffee, and sometimes I can't find money to take a taxi from my house to the Unknown Soldiers Park and I walked on foot," said Abu Nahel sadly.
According to the Palestinian Statistics Bureau, the unemployment rate in the Gaza Strip reached 38.6 percent in 2009, adding that around 40 percent of the 1.5 million people living in the impoverished blockaded enclave of the Gaza Strip are living under the line of poverty."
Ahmed al-Kurd, the minister of labor in the deposed government of Islamic Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip told Xinhua that his ministry "is working on offering irregular emergency support to the unemployed workers, in addition to the small businesses and projects that temporarily employ workers."
"There are not more than 2,000 workers who are getting benefits out of these temporary projects," al-Kurd said, adding that his government and other charities in the Gaza Strip "are trying to solve the problem of 20,000 workers, out of 150,000."
He said that the only solution for the current crisis of the workers in the Gaza Strip "is to end the unfair Israeli siege and allow all construction raw-material into the Gaza Strip, which would for sure help end the crisis of unemployment."
"The unfair siege that Israel imposed on the Gaza Strip had deprived the workers from their simple and basic rights," al-Kurd said.
The deteriorated economical situation in Gaza had prompted thousands of unemployed workers to look for risky jobs, even in smuggling tunnels that the Palestinians dug under the borderline between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. According to Gaza rights groups' figure, 145 workers died in those tunnels.
In the middle of his work, Abu Nahel worried about his 7-year- old daughter, whose sickness needs permanent therapy. But his income wouldn't be enough to feed his children and buy them the medicine they need.
"I live a very hard life, because even one day I don't work, my children won't find anything to eat. Death might be much better than such kind of life. My daily average income is not more than 40 shekels a day, which is far from enough amid the crazy price hikes," said Abu Nahel. (1 U.S dollar equals to 3.72 Shekels)
Gaza workers struggle to survive amid siege, unemployment
by Sami el-Ajrami
GAZA, May 1 (Xinhua) -- Jawdat Abu Nahel, a 41-year-old Gaza resident, sat in a corner at the Unknown Soldiers Park in downtown Gaza city, where he spent 16 hours a day selling tea and coffee, after losing his job in Israel four years ago.
Abu Nahel lives in the Shatti (Beach) Refugee camp in the western part of the city, and has to provide for his family with seven children. He said he used to work in Israel in the field of construction, with a monthly pay of 6,000 shekels (about 1,613 U.S. dollars). "But now I live on the edge of financial collapse."
"When I worked in Israel, I managed to purchase a house near my parents, got married and had five daughters and two sons," said Abu Nahel.
Before Israel closed its borders to the Gaza Strip population, around 150,000 Palestinians used to work in Israel in different fields.
Since the second Intifada or Uprising erupted against Israel in late September 2000, Israel started a gradual ban of workers from Gaza to work in Israel. Since Hamas seized control of the enclave in 2007, all Gaza workers were driven out of Israel.
After he lost his job in Israel, Abu Nahel worked in a silvering workshop. However, he was obliged to leave this job after Israeli warplane missiles targeted these workshops, claiming that they helped militants in making homemade rockets that they fired at southern Israel.
Abu Nahel began to look for other sources of living, whatever the source is. He did not have the money to start even a small profitable business, so he began to sell hot drinks to drivers and storekeepers on the road.
Every morning, he left his 3-room apartment, with an Asbestos ceiling, his primitive tools and a bag full of tea, coffee and sugar, hoping that his upcoming day would be better than the previous ones.
He got back home late at night, finding his children asleep. He went to sleep, thinking all the time how he can keep his children surviving. He never took a day off, and worked seven days a week.
"Sometimes I borrowed money from friends and relatives to buy tea, sugar and coffee, and sometimes I can't find money to take a taxi from my house to the Unknown Soldiers Park and I walked on foot," said Abu Nahel sadly.
According to the Palestinian Statistics Bureau, the unemployment rate in the Gaza Strip reached 38.6 percent in 2009, adding that around 40 percent of the 1.5 million people living in the impoverished blockaded enclave of the Gaza Strip are living under the line of poverty."
Ahmed al-Kurd, the minister of labor in the deposed government of Islamic Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip told Xinhua that his ministry "is working on offering irregular emergency support to the unemployed workers, in addition to the small businesses and projects that temporarily employ workers."
"There are not more than 2,000 workers who are getting benefits out of these temporary projects," al-Kurd said, adding that his government and other charities in the Gaza Strip "are trying to solve the problem of 20,000 workers, out of 150,000."
He said that the only solution for the current crisis of the workers in the Gaza Strip "is to end the unfair Israeli siege and allow all construction raw-material into the Gaza Strip, which would for sure help end the crisis of unemployment."
"The unfair siege that Israel imposed on the Gaza Strip had deprived the workers from their simple and basic rights," al-Kurd said.
The deteriorated economical situation in Gaza had prompted thousands of unemployed workers to look for risky jobs, even in smuggling tunnels that the Palestinians dug under the borderline between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. According to Gaza rights groups' figure, 145 workers died in those tunnels.
In the middle of his work, Abu Nahel worried about his 7-year- old daughter, whose sickness needs permanent therapy. But his income wouldn't be enough to feed his children and buy them the medicine they need.
"I live a very hard life, because even one day I don't work, my children won't find anything to eat. Death might be much better than such kind of life. My daily average income is not more than 40 shekels a day, which is far from enough amid the crazy price hikes," said Abu Nahel. (1 U.S dollar equals to 3.72 Shekels)