‘Life requires cash’: Gaza’s jobs crisis leaves people struggling to afford basics

(Jason Burke, and Seham Tantesh – The Guardian) Every morning, Mansour Mohammad Bakr sets out from the small rented room in Gaza City he shares with his pregnant wife and two very young daughters. The 23-year-old walks past the port and the breaking waves of the Mediterranean where he once earned his living. Before the two-year war that devastated Gaza, Bakr was a fisher, sharing tackle and a boat with his father and brothers. Now his brothers are dead, his father is too old, and his equipment was destroyed during the conflict. Like hundreds of thousands of others across Gaza, Bakr needs a job. “Money is the main means of survival in Gaza … without it, a person cannot do anything,” he says. “The limited aid that reaches us doesn’t replace our need for money in any way and doesn’t cover even the most basic living requirements.”. Humanitarian organisations have ramped up distribution since October, when a ceasefire agreement came into effect, leading Israel to lift some of the heavy restrictions it had imposed on aid and easing its delivery within Gaza. In January, United Nations agencies and their partners reached approximately 1.6 million people with household-level general food assistance. World Central Kitchen, an NGO, is now serving 1 million hot meals a day. But such assistance remains vastly insufficient and still covers only basic necessities. For everything else, brought in by the private sector, Palestinians in Gaza need cash. Aid workers in Gaza say more fresh fruit, vegetables, meat, clothes and household items are now available, but at exorbitant prices. “There has been a huge increase in commercial supplies … but it is all very expensive,” says Kate Charlton, a Médecins Sans Frontières medical coordinator in Gaza City. – ‘Life requires cash’: Gaza’s jobs crisis leaves people struggling to afford basics | Gaza | The Guardian