A Growing Despair

Linda El Laham shares a meager lunch of boiled tomatoes and flatbread with one of her children. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps

Al Mawassi, Gaza Strip — In his best year, Suhhi Mohamed Mohamed El Laham netted $2,000 exporting hundreds of crates of tomatoes grown in the greenhouses next to his family compound. A modest sum, he says, but enough to take care his mother, his wife and his five children, all under the age of 10.

But that was before the Hamas victory in January elections caused international donors to suspend payments to the Palestinian Authority, and led Israel to halt transferring the taxes it collects on the Authority's behalf and to virtually seal off this narrow strip of land to protect innocent civilians from militant attacks.

As a result, 73,000 government workers in Gaza haven't been paid since February, and the flow of exports leaving Gaza has ground to a standstill. The main cargo crossing between Gaza and Israel has been closed to exports for 60 days this year, resulting in an estimated economic loss of more than $9.5 million for already-poor Palestinian farmers.

Thousands of pounds of tomatoes have rotted at the border, while others fetch dismal prices in languishing markets and still others are left to wither on their vines. Gazans feel that their economic opportunities, like unpicked fruits, are drying up, too.

"It is collective punishment because of the elections," says Suhhi, a tall man with a quiet disposition. These days he grows tomatoes only for his family — like for today's lunch of boiled tomatoes and flatbread — and makes just over $1 an hour picking produce on nearby farms, if and when such work is available.

Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps

"I am dying every day"

On a recent Sunday, Suhhi reluctantly accepted a package of food aid from Mercy Corps, which over the last several weeks has been delivering aid to vulnerable families caught in the crossfire of a political crisis. The flour, vegetable oil, milk and other staple foods should tide over the family a few weeks.

"Of course, I would rather work," he says.

Today, the white tarpaulins that cover his greenhouses are frayed from disuse, but he says they aren't worth fixing. Tomato vines once climbed on the twines still affixed to the rafters, but they're now either rolled up in balls or dangling without purpose. Potatoes, greens and other crops now claim much of the ground.

At the kitchen sink, his wife, Linda, washed and peeled tomatoes for the family's lunch, her busy hands illuminated by a beam of sunlight from a bullet hole in the metal roof — a shot from Israeli settlers, she says, who once lived no more than 100 yards away. She brought a saucepot full of tomatoes into the small interior courtyard, and placed it over a small grill fueled by twigs and sticks. Because of the border closure, there is no longer any propane available in Gaza to fire up the kitchen stove.

"I am dying every day," says Suhhi, downcast. "I get sick from the anger and the emotion. When I see my children want to buy a small thing and I can't, I get sad. I actually have difficulty breathing."

His wife suffers from respiratory problems, too, he says. He leaves momentarily and returns with a large brown envelope filled with x-rays and doctor's notes. They are Linda's, he explains, and they reveal a clean bill of health - proof to him that her ailment is a severe physical reaction to the stress of their situation.

Depending on handouts

Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps

Earlier in the day, at a large cement warehouse beside the beach, Linda was among 150 women who stood in line clutching green coupons they would soon exchange for needed supplies of flour, vegetable oil, and other staple food items. They also collected boxes of detergent, pots, pans and other cookware and a large plastic rain barrel.

Their husbands helped them load the canvas sacks and other items onto donkey carts or pickup trucks to haul back to their modest homes in one of Gaza's poorest areas.

Mercy Corps purchased and distributed these items with the help of a local child-health agency, Ard al-Insan, who selected the 150 beneficiaries from among their most severe hardship cases. Another 150 families received the same package of goods the following day, while an additional 100 people were given all but the house wares.

More food aid will be needed until a political solution is reached that unleashes Gaza's economy and allows wages to be paid to public-sector workers.

Earlier this month, the World Food Program said that it would increase the number of people it feeds in Gaza and the West Bank by 25 percent, to 600,000 non-refugees, starting in July. It estimates that two million Palestinians, 51 percent of the population, are unable to meet their daily food needs without assistance.

Mercy Corps, whose work in the occupied Palestinian territory dates to the 1980s, continues to explore ways of helping people persevere through the economic crisis. In addition to providing direct food assistance, the agency is exploring a short-term jobs program to inject money into the economy and give families an income to meet their immediate needs.

According to the UN, decent work for Gazans is what is most urgently needed. "The development of a viable Palestinian economy," the report states, "must be a priority."