Media coverage
Al Jazeera Net · 2015-06-02
Al Jazeera Net's account of a New York Times report on despair in Gaza nearly a year after the 2014 war, as reconstruction promises evaporated, prices rose and Gaza's civil servants went unpaid. Shaban says Gazans are stuck in the middle of the conflict while Ramallah does not care about them, and accuses the Palestinian Authority of having an interest in keeping Gaza paralysed.
Al Jazeera Net's account of a New York Times report on despair in Gaza nearly a year after the 2014 war, as reconstruction promises evaporated, prices rose and Gaza's civil servants went unpaid. Shaban says Gazans are stuck in the middle of the conflict while Ramallah does not care about them, and…
Gaza’s residents are experiencing a state of despair and loss of hope over the implementation of reconstruction promises to rebuild what Israel destroyed in its latest assault on the Gaza Strip, known as the Fifty-Day War.
The New York Times said in a report from Gaza that recession is affecting all aspects of life in the city, which is home to about 1.8 million people, and has caused prices to rise by as much as 50% in some cases, such as milk.
As a result of the political deadlock and the failure of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), which administers Gaza’s affairs, to reach a satisfactory agreement with the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah) and the Palestinian Authority, about forty thousand government employees in Gaza have not received their salaries for four months. This has forced the Gaza authorities to impose additional fees on imports, but the measure has had a negative effect on market prices, which have risen as a result of these new fees.
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The newspaper quotes Palestinian economist Omar Shaban as saying, “The Palestinian citizen (in Gaza) is trapped in the middle of the conflict, and Ramallah does not care about him.”
Shaban accused the Palestinian Authority of having an interest in keeping the situation paralyzed in Gaza.
The newspaper describes the destruction that has struck buildings in some areas of Gaza as a result of the Israeli bombardment, and says that the evaporation of reconstruction promises has added more frustration to the people of Gaza, who were already suffering bitterly from the blockade imposed on them for many long years.
Many Palestinian families in Gaza are living in homes and buildings destroyed by Israeli bombardment, and their residents are unable to find the assistance needed to rebuild what the aggression destroyed.
It is worth noting that Israel imposes a suffocating blockade on Gaza and prevents the entry of construction materials, claiming that Hamas uses them to build tunnels to launch attacks against Israel.
On the other hand, the Egyptian government, which is hostile to the Muslim Brotherhood, is contributing to the strangulation of Gaza, which is governed by Hamas, and has taken extraordinary measures to destroy the tunnels that used to supply Gaza with the means of life.
As a result of the blockade and the failure to begin reconstruction projects, the unemployment rate in Gaza has risen to 44%, the highest rate in the world.
The newspaper reviews one of the situations causing frustration in the Gaza Strip: the Palestinian Authority pays the salaries of its employees who used to work in government departments when Gaza was under its control, but the salaries are paid not in exchange for work, but in exchange for staying at home and not going to work as long as Hamas controls Gaza.
Ashraf al-Qudra, spokesperson for the Ministry of Health in Gaza, says, “It is illogical: a person sits at home and receives his salary, and when he falls ill he goes to a government hospital to be treated by a doctor who has not received his salary (because he works under Hamas authority).”
Text © Al Jazeera Net — archived here with attribution to the source. — Machine translation for archival reference. — Original source