Gaza’s Economy: Still in conflict

Last week, more than 1,000 small white flags decorated Carnegie Library’s lawn — each one commemorating one of the many civilian lives lost in the Gaza-Israel conflict last summer.

Students, professors and activists read only of a few of the names behind the white flags lining the sidewalk to mark the one-year anniversary of the end of the conflict. They did so with a sense of urgency, for while the memory of this tragedy fades from our societal conscious, it becomes increasingly important to keep the memory of the conflict and its economical consequences alive.

Between July 8 and Aug. 27, 2014, the conflict that rocked the Gaza Strip resulted in the death of 2,100 Palestinians and 73 Israelis, as was reported in an article in Reuters.

While only seven of the Israelis killed were civilians, 1,462 Palestinian civilians lost their lives to Israel’s Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s controversial military offensive that many rights groups claim embodied disproportionate and indiscriminate attacks.

The United Nations issued a report condemning both sides of the conflict in June.

The conflict may have ended more than a year ago, but its consequences continue to dictate the conditions of Palestinians’ everyday life in the Gaza Strip. According to a World Bank report released in May, Gaza’s economy is on the “verge of collapse,” largely due to the 2014 war, in which air strikes razed many neighborhoods and displaced about 11,000 Palestinians.

What’s more is that Gaza faces the highest unemployment rate in the world — 43 percent of its 1.8 million residents are unemployed — as a result of the conflict. The figure is even higher among youth, as 60 percent of Palestinian youth in Gaza are without a job.

Employed Palestinians still face job insecurity. Some of the region’s employers, such as Hamas, the extremist Islamic group that has governed Gaza since seizing power in 2007, struggle to pay their workers’ salaries. Forty thousand security forces and civil servants have worked for a year without salary.  Hamas particularly has lost a large source of revenue, as Isreal has cracked down on its smuggling routes. Although they were illegal, the smuggling routes brought in many of the needed restruction materials.

Hamas, a group known for its terrorist practices, which include targeting civilians for political gains, is not the ideal employer, but Gaza’s economic situation has left Palestinians with few other options, as was detailed in an article for The Atlantic.

According to the May World Bank report, war, poor governance and the joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade led to Gaza’s dire economic state. This policy that has been in place since 2007. The policy essentially forces Gaza’s economy to struggle to get by without contact with the outside world by placing strict limits on imports, exports and travel to and from the territory. Additionally, without conflict and restrictions, Gaza’s GDP would be four times higher than what it is now, according to the report.

Without any secure employment, Gazans have little choice but to live in abject conditions. The poverty rate in Gaza is extremely high at 39 percent and more than 80 percent of Gaza residents cannot get by without some form of aid, according to the 2014 World Bank Fact Sheet on Gaza.

According to a report released last week by the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development, Gaza could easily become uninhabitable in the next five years if current economic trends continue.

People simply cannot continue to live without employment or support themselves and their families in the already dangerous conditions of the Gaza Strip.

Raghav Sharma, a junior politics and philosophy major and the president of Students for Justice in Palestine at Pitt, said we need to place a lens on the conditions in Gaza.

“The real victims in Gaza are the survivors. Over 100,000 Palestinians were made homeless by Israeli bombs last summer. Schools and hospitals have been destroyed, and the ones that remain are stretched to capacity. The blockade remains, preventing much needed humanitarian aid from reaching Gaza,” Sharma said. “Too often, the spectacle of war distracts us from the sort of everyday violence that the Palestinians are being subjected to. This violence will not end so long as the U.S. can provide Israel with unconditional support.”

Perhaps the best way to instigate meaningful change within Gaza would be to urge Israel to lift its blockade on the territory. Israel faces mounting pressure to end this repressive policy. An online petition calling for the end of the blockade has accumulated more than 100,000 signatures thus far.

As Sharma mentioned, the blockade has prevented vital reconstruction materials from entering the Gaza Strip. Of the 5,000 tons of cement, steel and other materials required to rebuild the territory, Israel has only permitted  five percent into Gaza. As a result, not one of the 19,000 structures destroyed last summer has been rebuilt.

Palestinians are trapped in living conditions too close to those of last summer’s conflict. We must not forget the hundreds of thousands of other invisible flags that filled Carnegie Library’s lawn last week, marking the lives of all of those impacted by this conflict who continue to suffer.

Alyssa primarily writes on social justice and political issues for The Pitt News.

Write to her at aal43@pitt.edu