On the occasion of International Woman’s Day this week, we decided to look at situation of women in the Gaza Strip. Out of 1.5 million people in the Gaza Strip, women comprise 49.2% of the population. The percentage of women in the labor market today is 12.2% of the total workforce, a percentage that is considered low when compared to other countries in the world.

We interviewed Muna Al-Almi, Manager of FATEN, an organization that provides loans and business development advice to women, in order to understand the unique situation of women in Gaza.

When was FATEN established and what are its aims?

The organization was established in 1998 with the aim of providing financial services to low income Palestinians, principally women. We support projects that can help women improve their lives and position.

Whoever receives a loan from the organization undergoes training that we provide with the help of civil society organizations, with the goal of helping women in different areas, for example: time management, marketing, pricing of goods and women’s rights. This is with the aim of educating women about their rights as women and as workers.

Our loans vary between $500- $5000 and are paid back over a period of 24 months. The criteria that guide us in our decision to finance a business are mostly good management and planning, and also the extent to which the business is intended to serve women. Examples of businesses that have received loans include: candle and jam manufacturers, agricultural businesses, a poultry farm, a cosmetic business, and financing a women-run pharmacy. Other projects that mainly employ or provide services to women include: embroidery, home cooking and sales. 

Muna Al-Almi, Manager of FATEN

We focus on women because they comprise the weakest section of society. We have many families who are financially dependent on women, where their husbands have died, been killed or have been disabled as a result of the difficult circumstances of the conflict or are completing prison terms in Israeli jails.

Many women turn to us for help, they don’t feel that there is a risk in taking a loan to open a business because in our society it is acceptable that women are forced to work and support their children. The women compete with men in the sense that they go out to work in order to support their family and this empowers them. Sometimes women do this better than men.

How has the closure impacted FATEN and its clients?

The closure has affected all residents of Gaza and impacted a big percentage of the women that have taken out loans. These women in the past purchased their raw materials from Israel, whether these were textiles or industrial goods. Since the closure, these materials are not permitted to enter Gaza. In addition, a lot of men have stopped working in Israel. This also impacts women greatly, and requires them to have to look for work. They are forced to become integrated in the job market in order to support their families.

At the start of the closure, the women did not honor the loan repayments which they were supposed to return to FATEN. Some of the businesses did not receive projected profits, because the business plan was conceived according to the conditions in place before the closure. We helped women via training and financial support for businesses that were on the verge of bankruptcy.

We started to think about alternatives as a means to adjust to the new conditions and the rising prices of raw materials as a result of the closure, such as providing limited finance to established businesses in order to prevent bankruptcy.

Moreover, instead of supporting industries requiring raw materials, we financed businesses that do not need raw materials that are not available in Gaza. So, for example, there is a preference for embroidery instead of jam manufacture that requires jars that cannot enter Gaza. We have been forced to be creative in order to operate in a manner that suits the conditions in Gaza. Despite everything, we continue to encourage women to become integrated into the labor market because of the rise in the unemployment rate and the decline in per capita income in the Strip as a result of the closure.

What are the needs of women in Gaza?

For women in the Gaza Strip there is a need for stability and security in order to realize their dreams and to provide a dignified life for their children. Women in Gaza also need to work in order to advance equality between women and men. They need society to look at women differently, and for views that do not support women going out to work, not to be encouraged. We need to promote women to aspire to be even more active.

Women in Gaza need more opportunities for work, but not only this. They also need opportunities to express themselves and for new opportunities to open up for women.

As the manager of an organization that supports women, what is the message that you give to the women of Gaza on International Women’s Day?

Our message is that women have an important role in breaking the closure. She needs to go out to work and to show the world that despite the hardships, she has the power to change the situation. Our work assists women in all respects, from loans to training, business management and the rights of women in general. I hope that the closure will end and that we will see stability in the Palestinian Territory, especially in the Gaza Strip. We hope that the borders will be open so that women will have opportunities to change the economic situation of our society.

Building the “perfect home” is a dream shared by many people, especially if you are one of the tenants of the 3,500 homes that were destroyed or of the 56,000 homes that were damaged in last year’s military operation in the Gaza Strip. This week, we’ve pulled together some instructions to help you build your dream house in Gaza. Make sure to keep these useful tips handy! 

First of all, because of Israel’s prohibition on the entry of building materials to the Strip since the June 2007 start of the closure, we will need to use locally available materials. Mud will be used to build the foundation and the walls of the house, easily found during the wintertime in Gaza’s natural surroundings. Make sure to avoid collecting mud from areas where raw sewage flows. Have patience, once the ban on the entry of spare parts, equipment and fuel is lifted, the water and sewage systems will operate at better capacity.

We’ll need to mix the mud with gravel. Due to Israel’s ban on the entry of this material, we will use limestone instead. To the limestone-mud mixture, add rocks found scattered around the area and mix for a long time until a thick mass is formed. In order to hasten the hardening of the mud, approach the nearest wheat field, cut off some shafts of wheat, and add them to the mixture. Place the mud into a baking dish, wait until it dries and presto — you now have material to make bricks and begin construction!

One of the mud houses recently built in Gaza, which serves as an example of the way the Strip's residents are coping with the ban on the transfer of raw materials.

Now, to build the house. For the support structures we will need iron. However, as you can already guess, since June 2007, Israel has prevented the entry of iron to the Gaza Strip. If you can afford to pay for the iron available in Gaza coming in via the tunnels at 4000 shekels ($1,060) a ton compared to only 2600 ($690) before the closure, fantastic! If not, you will need to mix sand, straw and glue and then roll the mixture into long beams.

Next, we will use the most basic building material, which we have avoided using so far: cement. Cement, the entry of which is also banned by Israel, will be purchased from the tunnel operators. Due to the fact that cement is extremely expensive — 900 shekels ($238) a ton, compared with about 450 shekels ($119) before the closure — we will only use it to build the bathroom, though we’re itching to use it for the rest of the house! 

We’re almost finished. All that’s left to build is the roof and for this we will use plates of glass. Finally, something that is found in Gaza! Despite the prohibition on the transfer of glass to Gaza for two and a half years, since the end of December 2009, glass is no longer considered a security threat, and so far about 100 trucks of glass have entered the Strip.  

Now, after all your hard work, turn on the light switch that you’ve just installed and look around at the fruits of your labor. Oh, is there a blackout in the area again? At least you can enjoy the magnificent view of the sky and the light of the stars shining through the glass ceiling of your cozy, little house.  

Gisha reiterates its call on Israel to lift the ban on the entry of building materials so that people in Gaza may rebuild their homes with dignity.

In Gaza, even scrap metal collection has its hazards.

OCHA reminds us this week in its monitor of the “buffer zone” in place inside Gaza, an area in which the Israeli military prevents Gaza residents from getting within 300 meters of the border between Israel and Gaza – even those trying to earn an unlikely livelihood. This week, OCHA reports, Israeli soldiers entered Gaza and arrested 10 Palestinian civilians who were collecting scrap metal near the border; they were later released.

Arrests in this area and sporadic incursions are of course a clear reminder to Gaza residents that Israel still exercises control over their lives, even if control over the movement of goods and people, felt via an invisible hand, has a greater effect on their lives.

A ban on the entrance of raw materials, for example, has closed factories and contributed to Gaza’s X% unemployment rate – which may have driven those 10 people to risk nearing the border for the few shekels they could earn selling scrap metal. Other job-seekers are looking to the public sector, as the Hamas government is one of the few employers hiring. It was reported last week that 14,000 candidates responded to a call for 1,000 positions in the police – also a risk, given the fact that civilian police have been targeted in Israeli airstrikes.

These job-seekers in Gaza may not have dreamed of a career in metals-trading or law enforcement, but without the raw materials necessary to engage in gainful production – it looks like they will risk their lives to pursue it.

Articles recently published about the tunnel trade in the Gaza Strip describe the relatively new industry in an adventurous light, even daring – the Indiana Jones of the Middle East. However, the problem is that adopting this perspective may obscure the overall picture.

Indeed, the tunnels industry at the Gaza-Egypt border has become “one of the largest branches of Gaza’s economy”, if not the largest. Yet the industry’s success is directly linked to Israel’s closure policy, which allows for the passage of “humanitarian goods” only (“humanitarian goods” are yet to be defined). Ironically, this new economy is proving most profitable for the Hamas government, which oversees tunnel mining and operations, and which collects taxes from tunnel owners.  The hundreds of tunnels operating today in Gaza and the thousands of people employed in them account for about two-thirds of the goods entering Gaza.

Although there are a few making big bucks off of the tunnel trade, in contrast, most residents of the Gaza Strip face a grim reality. The industry, by its very nature, is a testament to this. Many young people are forced, because they have no alternative employment options, to work in the tunnels and sometimes remain working underground for days on end. Since the start of the closure, approximately 110 people have been killed on the job, among them 30 children. The total number of people wounded due to tunnel related incidents such as suffocation and entrapment as a result of explosions, air strikes and collapses stands at approximately 190.

A clip produced by B’Tselem endeavors to illustrate, if only a little, this reality.

What’s it like to spend at least one-third, if not the whole day, without electricity? One and a half million people have been living like that for over a week in what is just the latest chapter in the ongoing electricity crisis in the Gaza Strip. If there is a common theme that persists throughout this saga, it is the perpetual, imposed sense of “living on the edge“.

In November, the European Union, which funds the industrial diesel needed  to operate Gaza’s only  power station, announced that in a joint decision with the Palestinian Authority (PA), its funding worth 97 million Euros per year would end, due in part to the global economic crisis. Despite the fact that it warned of its intentions months in advance, no alternative arrangement was made, although some European states have expressed willingness to provide funding for the PA to cover the cost of the diesel. In the meantime, the Gaza power station was forced to limit itself to an output of just 30 megawatts, almost a third of its potential generation capacity (80 megawatts). According to media reports, another factor that is hampering resolution of the funding issue is the internal Palestinian conflict and the PA’s demand that Hamas contribute to the costs or collect money from consumers. The PA is effectively inviting Hamas, which has not previously been involved in electricity generation in Gaza, to play an active role in the procurement and funding of the industrial diesel supply for Gaza’s power plant. This week, the power plant increased production to 60 megawatt after receiving additional fuel deliveries, but it is not clear whether a solution has been found.

Gaza Power Plant

Indeed, it seems that all the players in this drama are exploiting a need as basic and obvious as electricity in order to promote their political objectives. Despite the fact that the power station is clearly a vital civilian infrastructure, despite the fact that it is largely privately owned, and despite the fact that the industrial diesel is used solely to operate the power station’s turbines, Israel decided to bomb the station in 2006, inflicting damage which has yet to be fully repaired. Moreover, since 2007, Israel has limited the transfer of industrial diesel to the Gaza Strip to a “minimum” that it set at 2.2 million liters per week, despite the fact that in reality 3.5 million liters are required for the present maximum output of the power station.

The Israeli policy of “reduction to the minimum” means that the power station has no ability to stockpile reserves of industrial diesel to prepare for interruption of supply. So when supply is interrupted, this time due to funding problems and the conflict within the Palestinian leadership, 1.5 million people need to learn to live with power outages for 8 hours or more per day.

Since Israel sent a search and rescue team and doctors to help earthquake-devastated Haiti, op-eds and articles have praised Israel’s important provision of relief and also attempted to hold up a mirror to the country, showing closure-devastated Gaza just over our shoulder. Some in Israel asked, how is it that aid is rushed half a world away when children are living in half-destroyed homes just an hour’s drive from Tel Aviv? Others argued that Israel’s positive actions in Haiti should stand alone, even if the Israeli government over-publicized the efforts (in his blog this week, Ami Kaufman adds English subtitles to a popular Israeli satire spoofing the over-focus on Israeli rescue efforts in Haiti – worth watching!). Israel’s Foreign Ministry justifiably expresses pride in Israel’s humanitarian actions in Haiti, but it also boasts, for example, in the MFA round-up for 2009 that aid to the Gaza Strip increased by 900% in 2009. Is that really something to be proud of?

On average, 2,500 trucks of goods enter the Gaza Strip each month. This is roughly 25% of the amount that entered prior to the June 2007 closure of the Strip (10,400/month). The items permitted entrance are limited to basic goods “necessary for the survival of the population” (to quote a recent letter Gisha received from the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT)). Items like flour, grain, and sugar are allowed. Every month new items appear among those allowed in and others items are mysteriously rejected: coffee this month yes, but cardamom to flavor it, no. Anise yes, and black pepper too, but vinegar no. Significantly, there is a total ban on raw materials that would permit Gaza residents to engage in production and commerce, allowing for economic independence. Clarity regarding the policy requires no less than a court order.

Israel does not provide the aid transferred to Gaza. In fact it earns on each truck that passes and each ton of aid bought or shipped, stored, and transferred through its territory. After closing all of Gaza’s other crossings, including the airspace, territorial waters, and indirectly – Rafah Crossing – Israel partially opens its side of the gates to Gaza to allow others to bring in aid and other items. More often than not, Israel blocks the movement of goods in to and out of Gaza and of course the movement of people who in most parts of the world travel into and out of their countries for simple, every day things like work and school and weddings.

These restrictions – and the policy underlying them, limiting Gaza residents to a “minimal” existence – are what have helped make Gaza residents dependent on international aid, whose provision Israel burdens.

Since the end of December 2009, 36 trucks loaded with strawberries and cut carnation flowers were permitted to leave Gaza for Israel’s Ashdod port, from which they were shipped to Europe. This is the first time since January 2008 that strawberries have managed to leave the 41 kilometer-long Strip. The flowers have been a little luckier – prior to December 2009, Israel permitted the export of 19 truckloads of flowers during the past 2.5 years of closure, mostly around Valentine’s Day.

Prior to the June 2007 closure, 30-35 trucks of agricultural produce were exported every working day of the agricultural export season (November – March), carrying mainly cherry tomatoes, flowers and strawberries. This amount is from a total daily average of 70 trucks of exports, mostly furniture, garment, cash crops, vegetables, processed food, metal products, handicrafts, and other kinds of goods. Gaza export –halted except for the trickle of strawberries and flowers – used to account for 10.8% of the Palestinian gross domestic product (GDP), valued at $330 million. That is now lost. Estimated annual losses from the inability to export agricultural products alone stand at approximately $32 million, and tens of thousands of people in the agricultur! al sector have lost their livelihood.

The flower and strawberry export is part of a one million Euro program, sponsored by the Dutch government, to support Gaza’s farmers. The Dutch government insists that Israel permit the flowers and strawberries to reach European markets as an exception to the ban on all other kinds of export from Gaza, a ban which has forced other donors to convert development programs into humanitarian hand-outs. If Gaza’s crossings were fully open for export and Gaza residents were afforded the right to engage in a dignified living, European taxpayers could spend less money on aid and more money buying strawberries grown in Gaza, rumored to be among the sweetest and reddest in the world.

The firing of rockets and mortar shells on towns in southern Israel from the Gaza Strip last week should be categorically condemned, since it targeted Israeli civilians or failed to distinguish between military and civilian targets. The perpetrators and the Hamas government which allows militant groups to fire from the territory under its control must be held accountable.

The Israeli Defense Ministry’s hasty response, however, declaring that Kerem Shalom would be closed until further notice, raised concern among those trying to transfer humanitarian supplies to Gaza. It was not clear whether the closure of the crossing was a legitimate measure in response to a real and concrete security risk to the crossing and those who work there, or if the Defense Ministry decided to react as it had in the second half of 2008: In the months leading up to the Gaza war, Israel closed the civilian crossings as punitive retribution for rocket fire, not as a response to a concrete security threat.

Residents of Gaza breathed a sigh of relief on Sunday, when Israel permitted the reopening of the Kerem Shalom Crossing and the resumption of a minimum level of supply to the Strip. The dependence on Kerem Shalom is so great because it is virtually the only goods’ crossing that remains open; every closure thus blocks the transfer of goods that are in short supply in Gaza because of the Israeli-imposed “minimum humanitarian standard”.

Since the closure of Gaza began in June 2007, Israel has systematically worked to restrict the operation of the Gaza Strip’s crossings – policies that reached a peak with the closure of the Nahal Oz crossing at the start of 2010. And so, at this time, with the exception of the grain conveyor at the Karni Crossing, the Gaza Strip is dependent on one crossing – Kerem Shalom – which was originally designed for the occasional transfer of humanitarian aid and which has limited capacity. Israel has even insisted that Egypt transfer all aid to the Gaza Strip coming from its territory via the Kerem Shalom crossing and not via its own crossing at Rafah. Last week, Egypt announced that it would permit supply from its territory only via Kerem Shalom. This dependence on Kerem Shalom is well-known to those who shoot at it and to those who allow the shooting to take place.

Israeli policies to restrict the operation of the Kerem Shalom crossing stand in violation of international agreements it has signed, which take into account situations where a security risk may occur at a particular crossing. In these agreements Israel committed to three basic principles that were intended to ensure that the Gaza Strip crossings would function on a continuous basis, even in the presence of real security threats: the operation of alternative lanes (lane redundancy) and alternative crossings (passage redundancy), as well as a commitment to the primary aim: the principle of continuous operation. Yet as of 2010, virtually all alternative crossings have been closed.

Since Israel insists on enforcing an almost total closure policy that leaves the Gaza Strip “on the edge” in every aspect of life (food, goods, electricity, cooking gas and more), every closure of the single crossing still permitted to operate, when already only minimum amounts are allowed through it, threatens to push Gaza over the edge.