Gaza's Unemployed Have Handouts or Hamas

Like many factory owners, Yazegi said he is sick of the factional fighting that has torn Palestinian society apart in recent years. Hamas won elections in 2006 and eventually entered into a unity government with its rival, the more secular Fatah party. But Hamas fighters routed Fatah in Gaza last June, taking control of the strip and prompting the Israeli embargo.

Mark Regev, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said the economic restrictions imposed on Gaza have been effective in undermining Hamas's power.

"More and more Palestinians understand that Hamas can't deliver," Regev said. "It can't deliver political answers, and it also can't deliver economic answers."

Regev said security considerations are also behind the embargo, because Israel can't afford to risk weaponry being shipped through the crossings: "Can anyone expect Israel to have a business-as-usual relationship with Gaza when you have rockets being fired every day and attacks like the one we had this past week?"

That attack, a raid by Palestinian gunmen at the Nahal Oz fuel depot, claimed the lives of two Israeli civilians. But it also raised questions about whether Hamas, which publicly demands that Israel open the crossings, really wants the siege to end. Although the raid was not carried out by Hamas, the organization praised the attack on Gaza's sole fuel source. Israel responded by closing Nahal Oz indefinitely, a move likely to exacerbate an already severe fuel shortage.

"Hamas and their supporters are the only ones who don't get hurt by this siege. They have jobs. They're working," said Sabari al-Naggar, a 36-year-old father of five who lost his garment factory job. "It's all the rest of us who have been destroyed."

Naggar used to make 70 shekels a day, or about $20. Now he is among the more than 80 percent of Gaza residents who live below the poverty line and rely on international aid, according to U.N. statistics. The United Nations estimated in December that 75,000 of the 110,000 workers in Gaza's private sector had lost their jobs since last June.

Naggar could receive money from Hamas in addition to the food aid he gets from the United Nations. But he refuses to accept help from a group he despises.

Without a job and without any prospects, Naggar does what many in Gaza do these days: nothing.

"We sit out in front of the house, we have lunch, we chat, we play cards, and then we go to sleep," he said.

It's not just Naggar. Without raw materials such as concrete or basic supplies like gasoline, very little gets done. Gaza City, one of the more densely populated places on earth, is marked by canyons of abandoned, partially completed construction projects. On some blocks, the silence is broken only by the braying of a donkey or the turn of a rusty bicycle wheel.

For the children who make up more than half the strip's population, there are few examples of people working -- apart from the Hamas police officers who patrol the streets.