Pressmediaofindia
Related Articles
06-01-2026
GAZA STRIP: Crammed in a tiny tent at a United Nations-run school in central Gaza City, Alaa Alzanin, along with his wife, five children, his 71-year-old mother and younger sister, are taking shelter after they lost their home in Beit Hanoon during Israel’s war. They have been displaced eight times, and this tent is where they now protect themselves from the rain and winter cold.
Alzanin, 41, cannot sustain his family because he is unemployed. He is a day laborer, but he is out of work like hundreds of thousands of people across the Gaza Strip.
“Now I have no work, I can’t provide for my family,” he told Al Jazeera, adding that he used to work in the infrastructure and farming sectors.
“I used to work with an axe to open water channels between the trees, plough the soil around them; spray pesticides, and plant tomatoes and cucumbers. I used to work from 7am to 4pm for 40–50 shekels ($13-$15) per day.”
Another man without income is Majed Hamouda. The 53-year-old from Jabalia, northern Gaza, has polio, and his wife is a thalassemia carrier. He has five children, and is sheltering at a camp in the Remal neighborhood school. He relies on financial aid from the Ministry of Development and on charity, as he can’t work due to his poor health. And since the war started, his aid payment has stopped.
“ًWe are like dead people, but not buried yet, we only look at living people, yes, I swear. If someone destroyed your home and kicked you out to the streets like dogs, even dogs live better lives than ours,’’ Hamouda told Al Jazeera.
“The dog in the street, no one would kick it off, but we were (kicked out) and displaced in the streets,’’ he explained. As one of his daughters started to cry.
On some days, the Hamouda family has nothing to eat, so the father asks his only son to collect plastics and rubbish from the streets to sell, so he can support his family. “My little son Yaqoub was the first in the northern schools in fourth grade. He won the prize of the Little Scientist from the Ministry of Education as he made eight successful scientific experiments for his age. Now, I sorrowfully look at him collecting nylon to burn for cooking food and running after the hot meal deliveries in the camp. I sometimes cry watching him,” he explained.
“Now it’s become a dream to eat a tomato or a cucumber, and this is inhumane.”
After more than two years of war, Israel has almost totally destroyed the Gaza Strip, leaving it with a hunger crisis and widespread famine. Supplies entering the besieged enclave are not meeting the nutritional needs of the people living there, the United Nations’ World Food Program has said. The aid entering the territory is way short of its daily target of 2,000 tones because only two crossings into the Palestinian territory are open, and Israel has restricted deliveries.
The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics said in its report issued mid-October that during Israel’s war the rate of unemployment in Palestine increased to 50 percent, and 80 percent in the Gaza Strip. The bureau also said that there are 550 thousand unemployed people across Palestine. A report by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said the Palestinian gross domestic product (GDP) had regressed to its 2010 level by the end of last year, while GDP per capita returned to levels seen in 2003, erasing 22 years of development in two years.
“Before the war, the Gaza Strip witnessed economic growth, with the opening of many commercial, tourism and industrial projects, and it became a haven for many investments in all sectors,” Maher Altabbaa, the director-general of the Gaza Governorate Chamber of Commerce and Industry, told Al Jazeera.
However, now the enclave’s GDP plunged 83 percent in 2024 compared with the previous year, with an 87 percent drop over two years to $362m. GDP per capita plummeted to $161, placing it among the lowest in the world. (Al Jazeera)
