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Gaza's Unemployed Have Handouts or Hamas
A worker stacks bottles of soda at the Gaza Strip's Pepsi plant, which faces a shutdown in the coming weeks because it can't import raw materials.
(Photos By Griff Witte -- The Washington Post)
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"For a Gazan youngster, the question is what do you want to be when you grow up," said Conal Urquhart, a U.N. humanitarian affairs officer based in Gaza. "Your options are very limited."
Hassan al-Hayek started working when he was 10, sweeping the shop floor at a factory that produced paving stones. Now, 52 years later, he owns five such factories but is out of work for the first time in his life.
"If I sell all my factories and all my property, I still won't be able to repay what I owe to the banks," he said, running his fingers through thinning hair. "This is my whole life's work. And now, at the end, I'm being ruined."
Mohammed Abu Dan followed the same path, from worker to owner. His garment factory was once the largest in Gaza, churning out 4,000 pairs of pants a day -- all of which went to Israel, where customers eagerly scooped them up for relatively low prices.
The factory -- ensconced in a graceful old home with high ceilings and semicircular windows -- looks today exactly as it did in June on the day the siege began.
Pants missing a leg lie unfinished on the sewing machines. Nearby, dozens of plastic bags are stuffed with pairs ready to be sold, if Abu Dan could just get them across the border and into Israel. Until then, he comes here every day, just to look.
"I consider this factory a cemetery," he said. "Someone I loved very much is buried here."
