Gazans struggle with rising prices

In Gaza, the enclave’s already shattered economy is feeling the pinch as prices for staple foods have started to climb.

The market in Gaza City’s Shati refugee camp was bustling Saturday, but many of the camp’s hard-up residents are buying less.

Hamas’s month-long confrontation with Israel has hit agricultural areas badly, pushing up prices.

Khaled Ighrad, 48, who was buying food with his wife and one of his six children, has had to cut back on some key items for his family.

The price of eggs has doubled from 10 shekels (two euros, $3) to 20 since July 8.

“I’m not buying a whole box of eggs, I’m buying half. I’ll buy this and it lasts us for two days,” he says, wistfully looking at the trays of eggs on the stall in front of him.

“Prices have gone up because things like meat and eggs are produced on the border area. We don’t go to the border area any more, so the people only went during the ceasefire.”

Mahir al-Tabaa, head of the Gaza chamber of commerce and industry, agrees the conflict had caused “huge and long term indirect losses” for the economy.

“The direct losses when (Israel) destroyed the economic and industrial establishments and residential buildings is around $3 billion,” he tells AFP.

He says while the price of petrol, which is also imported from Israel and the price of which is controlled by the government, has not changed in the conflict, “the prices of all goods and agricultural produce like vegetables and meat will significantly increase.

“This is a heavy burden,” he says.

In addition to this, the destruction of “350 industrial sites, including more than 50 large, strategic factories” would set unemployment climbing.

The “unemployment level will be around 50 percent after the war, an average of 200,000 people out of work… the level was 41 percent before the conflict,” he says.

One sector still doing a lively trade is tobacco.

In the market at Shati, Abu Salim sits by his small stall, where he sells cigarettes.

Although his prices have increased, he is doing brisk business, and shoppers constantly stop by to pick up a pack of Royals, the brand favored by many Gazans.

A packet of 20 Royals costs eight shekels, one more than before July 8, although Abu Salim has seen no decline in demand.

“In the truce people smoked a pack a day,” he said, referring to the three-day ceasefire that ended on Friday. “After it ended, they smoked two a day, because of the situation in the country,” he says.

— AFP