MAGHAZI REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip, 25 July 2006 — The latest Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip, in which some of the businesses which help keep the impoverished area afloat were destroyed, appears to be alienating even the most moderate of Palestinians. In the Maghazi refugee camp, the debris of broken sewing machines crunches under the feet of Ahmad Abdel Jawad. Before his clothes factory was demolished he sold all of his production to customers in Israel.
From his comfortable home on the edge of the camp, which lies in the middle of this narrow strip of land that is home to more than a million people, Jawad watched last week as Israeli tanks and bulldozers demolished his factory and destroyed its 150 sewing machines. “I thought: my future is in ruins,” he said. “I opened the factory two years ago, and before the Israeli blockade business was booming.”
“The factory made clothes destined exclusively for the Israeli market,” he added, bending down from time to time to pick up a roll of cloth or a pack of T-shirts that had somehow survived intact. He said some 70 families had depended on the factory for their livelihood. One of his employees, an old man with a wizened face, said he was worried about how his family would survive. “I have 10 people to feed from my work in this factory. How are we going to live now?” he demanded.
Karen Abu Zeid, head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, said when she visited the refugee camp on Saturday that she was “horrified” by the extent of the destruction caused by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip.
“We don’t quite understand why every economic venture has to be destroyed,” she said as she stood near Jawad’s demolished factory.
She said 16 people were killed in Maghazi in recent days, 125 were wounded and that some 80 families were now without houses.
