RAFAH, Gaza Strip: As the world’s top diplomats pledged more than $4.48 billion for war-ravaged Gaza, ordinary people here clamored for open borders, not handouts.
“I want a cease-fire and open borders. Crossings are better than tunnels,” said 22-year-old Abu Mahmoud, leaning over a tunnel shaft as workers below tried to clear a 100-meter stretch that had collapsed under a recent Israeli airstrike.
At the upscale Delice Cafe in Gaza City, speeches from the donors’ conference in Sharm El-Sheikh were broadcast live on a TV in the corner yesterday, but patrons didn’t pay much attention.
“I don’t think we can derive hope from such a meeting,” said civil engineering student Wassim Jaradat, 24, sitting at a table with two friends and sipping cappuccino. “I don’t think any immediate results will be seen on the ground.”
Car parts dealer Naif Masharawi, 60, said he was encouraged by the fact that top officials were meeting at all to talk about Gaza’s future. He said the blockade has been bad for business, noting that a gallon of Egyptian motor oil bought from tunnel smugglers costs nearly twice as much as the superior product he used to import from Israel. His last shipment from Israel arrived in May 2007.
The elderly shopkeeper said he had fond memories of the 1970s when he would drive from Gaza City to his Mercedes supplier in the port city of Haifa, without borders or checkpoints.
Housewife Sulafa Ayyad said she followed the donors’ conference on TV, hoping for new leads on claiming compensation for damage to her two-story home in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood.
The house, built with savings from her husband Ibrahim’s years as a laborer in Israel, had been hit by bullets and shrapnel during the Israeli war.
Ayyad, 33, said that so far, the family had received only $200 from a neighborhood welfare committee. She said there was some confusion over whether the family should get emergency aid from the Hamas government or a UN aid agency for refugees.
