Media coverage
Al-Quds Newspaper · 2022-04-13
Fires sparked by Israeli artillery shelling destroyed several facilities in the industrial zone east of the Gaza Strip, including its largest furniture factory and a warehouse belonging to Al-Siksik for Plastic Pipes, causing losses worth millions of dollars and disrupting key industrial production. Factory owners and economic officials say reconstruction is possible if compensation and financial support are provided, but stress that lifting the blockade and reaching a political agreement and internal reconciliation are essential to reviving Gaza’s economy.
Fires sparked by Israeli artillery shelling destroyed several facilities in the industrial zone east of the Gaza Strip, including its largest furniture factory and a warehouse belonging to Al-Siksik for Plastic Pipes, causing losses worth millions of dollars and disrupting key industrial production…
Gaza - “Al-Quds” Dot Com - (AFP) - Fires ignited by Israeli artillery shells last Thursday consumed the largest furniture factory in the Gaza Strip, reducing it to rubble within five hours, as the ashes of furniture mixed with the stones of the ceilings and their iron rods that fell to the ground.
The factory’s owners, Iyad and Nihad al-Sawafiri, were shocked when they saw the remains of the factory located in the industrial zone east of the Strip, but they expressed hope of getting the wheels of production turning again at the facility in which they said they had invested all their wealth.
Nihad al-Sawafiri (43) says: “I was deeply shocked; this is a massacre committed against the factory.”
Among the contents were about twenty heavy machines and wooden kitchens prepared to be transported to customers, according to his brother Iyad.
Iyad says: “We put all our effort and all the money we had into the factory on the basis that it is in the industrial zone as a safe place protected internationally.”
He adds in astonishment: “I was certain that no harm would come to the factory, as it is the largest furniture factory here.” But he adds: “We have lost millions; we will wait for financial compensation when the reconstruction phase begins.”
He expressed hope that he would “rebuild the factory and that Israel would not obstruct the entry of the heavy machinery,” adding: “They have killed our hope.”
Israel exercises full control over the Beit Hanoun (Erez) crossing for individuals in the north, and the Kerem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) commercial crossing in the south, as no goods, equipment, machinery, raw materials, or anything else can enter without Israeli permission.
The industrial zone was established in 1996, in agreement with Israel, two years after the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, to be the first industrial city in the Palestinian territories, over an area of about 500,000 square meters. It includes a large group of local and international industrial and commercial companies, international institutions, government bodies, and banks, and employs about ten thousand workers.
Among the most prominent facilities are a Coca-Cola factory, another for biscuits and sweets, one for detergents and shampoo, and a plastic pipes factory.
At the entrance to the closed zone are food aid warehouses belonging to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which sustained severe damage during the 2014 war.
In the latest military escalation, several facilities in the industrial zone were damaged either totally or partially, while other facilities were more fortunate.
In 2021, the industrial zone was supplied with a solar power project for electricity with a production capacity of 7.3 megawatts.
Israeli shelling also hit a warehouse belonging to al-Siksik Company for Plastic Pipes and Sanitary Ware, where the fire consumed 150 tons of plastic products, in losses estimated at more than one million dollars, according to the company’s director, Naeem al-Siksik.
Al-Siksik recounts how a fire broke out near his factory in the industrial zone at the beginning of the war. He says: “We thought it was by mistake.”
He adds: “But eight hours before the truce began, the guards informed me that a fire had broken out in the factory, but the Israeli army refused to allow the Red Cross or Civil Defense to enter the site” to extinguish it.
Al-Siksik told Agence France-Presse that his company owns the largest pipe factory in the Palestinian territories and Israel.
It provides about ninety percent of the pipes of various sizes needed for infrastructure projects, according to al-Siksik, who noted that part of his goods is supplied to the West Bank.
The Strip suffers from a high level of water pollution.
Standing in front of his factory and the warehouse beside the remains of burned pipes, he said: “When they struck our factory, this was a painful blow to the economy and industry in Palestine. These are targets that have nothing to do with security, the factions, or the rockets. The industrial zone was agreed upon with Israel.”
But he stressed that the factory’s production lines “can operate immediately because the machines were not damaged. We can produce 2,000 tons per month of different pipes and water tanks, but our actual production now is only 150 tons.”
The Strip, a narrow coastal strip where about two million people live, one third of them refugees, and which Israel has besieged by land, sea, and air for fourteen years, appears like a “ticking time bomb,” according to Omar Shaban, the economic and political analyst, especially as the unemployment rate in the Strip is about 50 percent.
Shaban, who is the director of the PalThink for Strategic Studies, said that the solution lies in “a political agreement under international auspices and work to create sustainable development for the Palestinian economy, reconstruct the Gaza Strip, and end the humanitarian crises suffered by the Strip’s residents, and this requires reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah and political partnership.”
Shaban pointed out that the United States and the European Union must pressure Israel to lift the blockade imposed on the Strip, stressing that the blockade leads to “more extremism and violence.”
The head of the Gaza Strip Chamber of Commerce, Waleed al-Hasari, described what happened as “a major shock to the industrial and economic sector in Gaza; we want stability.”
According to al-Hasari, “it is not difficult to rebuild what was destroyed if Arab and international financial support is available.”
Al-Siksik says: “It is unacceptable that we build, and then Israel destroys everything every five years.”
Text © Al-Quds Newspaper — archived here with attribution to the source. — Machine translation for archival reference. — Original source