GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories — Surveying the charred
remains of his Gaza furniture factory, destroyed by Israeli bombs last week,
its owner Eyad Sawafiri confronts a dilemma familiar to many business owners in
the Palestinian enclave.
اضافة اعلان
“After what has happened, I’m scared to rebuild,” he said.
“If I do, how do I know it won’t all be destroyed in the next war?”
Israeli air strikes and artillery fire in response to Hamas
rockets killed more than 240 people in the Gaza Strip, but also set back any
dreams of economic revival in the poverty-stricken coastal territory.
In the final hours of the latest, 11-day military
escalation, Israeli artillery fire Thursday rained down on an industrial zone
outside Gaza City.
Factories in Gaza have long produced furniture, plastic
pipes for water and sewage networks, soft drinks and sweet tea biscuits.
Some plants remained intact, others were damaged, some
completely destroyed — among them Sawafiri’s furniture workshop where he and
his brother Nehad employed 70 people.
“We thought setting up our factory in this international
industrial zone, next to UN refugee agency warehouses, would shield us,” said
Sawafiri, 45.
“We used to be the largest furniture factory in Gaza, but
everything has melted — the machines, the metal structure holding up the
factory.”
Looking at some still red-hot embers in the rubble, he said
his brother still could not bring himself to come and see how their business
had been reduced to ashes.
Burnt plastic
Friday’s ceasefire ended the fourth major Israel-Gaza
military clash since 2008.
It claimed 248 lives in Gaza, including 66 children, the
local health ministry says.
The death toll in Israel reached 12, including one child and
an Arab-Israeli teenager, an Israeli soldier, one Indian and two Thai
nationals, medics say.
On the Gaza side, the conflict did major economic damage,
bringing down entire office blocks, cratering roads and flattening factories.
The devastation spells another hurdle for the enclave of two
million where more than half of the working-age population is unemployed.
Its residents rarely received electricity for more than 12
hours a day, ever before the latest round of air raids further pummeled the
grid.
Only three percent of drinking water meets international
safety standards.
The densely crowded Mediterranean enclave has been under an
Israeli blockade since 2007.
It does not control its maritime borders, and its Hamas-run
government needs permission from Israel to export its produce or bring in any
supplies.
Because Hamas has turned metal components into rockets,
Israel has insisted that international donors only fund projects that use
plastic piping.
But in the latest conflict even a family-run Gaza factory
that made plastic pipes was hit, on the last day of fighting.
“When Israel stopped certain metal pipes from entering Gaza,
we decided to start producing plastic ones,” said its owner Naeem Al-Siksik,
standing next to the scorched pipes.
“But right now around 150 tons of plastic has been burnt.”
‘Endless cycle’
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN Palestinian refugee
agency UNRWA, said Gaza’s reconstruction should go hand in hand with efforts to
address the conflict’s “root causes”.
Only this could halt an endless cycle of destruction and
reconstruction, he said.
US President Joe Biden said Thursday his country was
committed to helping provide humanitarian relief and supporting reconstruction
in Gaza “in a manner that does not permit Hamas to simply restock its military
arsenal”.
Under a 2018 truce brokered by
UN and Egyptian officials, a
development roadmap was laid out for the strip’s crumbling infrastructure.
The gas-rich Gulf emirate of Qatar has since been providing
fuel for electricity, salaries and assistance for needy families in the strip.
But the overall plan did not include Western donors who are
wary of working with Hamas, which the United States and European Union have
designated as a “terrorist” organization, and progress has been slow.
Gaza-based analyst Omar Shaaban argued that Western
countries must realize they cannot work without Hamas.
“Does the international community really want to end this
cycle of destruction or not?” he asked.
“
Gaza is under Hamas’ control, so how can you possibly
rebuild without them? Hamas is everywhere — it runs the municipalities, water
and electricity.
“The only option is to include them.”
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