標題: which was brokered by Egypt's government 32 [打印本頁] 作者: kmiebgdd 時間: 2016-3-30 03:21 標題: which was brokered by Egypt's government 32
Egypt tunnel blockade takes toll on Gaza business
Hamas looks for solutions, domestic criticism muted
By Nidal al Mughrabi
GAZA, Dec 9 (Reuters) Mohammed Al Telbani, owner of one of Gaza's biggest food factories, is the sort of businessman plucky enough to thrive despite an Israeli blockade of the Palestinian coastal enclave, but even he says he is finally running out of answers.
With a new military backed government in Egypt shutting smuggling tunnels Christian Louboutin Outlet that had kept the Gaza Strip alive, he now worries for the first time that the siege will choke off his business and consign his 400 employees to poverty.
Last month, he was forced to pay 60,000 shekels ($17,000) for Israeli fuel to power his Buy Mont Blanc Australia four generators. He shut down for 11 days but says he still hopes to keep the business going.
"We are suffering great financial losses but I cannot close my business. I need to maintain my customers even if that means sacrificing profits or taking some losses," he said. "We Michael Kors Iphone 5 Case have to share the good Mbt Sale Outlet times and bad times and stick together."
Under years of Israeli Mont Blanc Pens sanctions, Gazan businessmen cobbled together a smuggling fueled economy that sustained the enclave under rule by Hamas Islamists. But with the overthrow of a sympathetic Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt tightening the blockade, many Gazans say they have never had it so tough.
Short on fuel, the lone Gaza power plant has ceased to serve nearly half the 1.8 million population. Patchy alternative supplies of electricity from Israel's grid have meant 12 hour Polo Ralph Lauren Shirts blackouts every day.
Night casts a pall over the city of Gaza, just 70 km (44 miles) down the Mediterranean coast from sparkling Tel Aviv. Shops close early to ration spare private generators.
Residents who live on upper floors feel trapped in their buildings. While the homes of those with means hum from private generators, poorer folk huddle in dark silence.
"No electricity. No power to heat the house when it pours with rain," said Ahmed Hamid, a taxi driver. "We blame everyone. Leaders in Gaza, in the West Bank, even Obama. Whoever sees us and does nothing is responsible for our tragedy."
Gazans say the economic trials loom even larger than the perennial fear of war with Israel. The last major fighting was more than a year ago and both sides appear to be keeping to a truce, which was brokered by Egypt's government, then led by the Muslim Brotherhood which has an historic kinship to Hamas.
The Egyptian military, which overthrew the Brotherhood in July, sees Hamas as a security threat and has since closed most of the 1,200 tunnels that used to run under the sandy frontier between Sinai and Gaza.
That has choked off supplies of weapons as intended, but also of commercial goods including construction materials, and, most damagingly, of cheap Egyptian petrol.
CLOSURES AND LAYOFFS
Businesses such as bakeries, restaurants, hotels and even farms say they may have to scale back work or lay off staff to stay solvent. For a Mont Blanc Pens Ebay populace already suffering 32 percent unemployment, that spells deeper misery.
The Hamas government has lost revenue it earned from taxing the smuggling tunnels. Salaries for many of Gaza's 50,000 public servants have arrived late in the past three months.
The construction industry, already slowed by Egypt's closure of the tunnels, ground to a halt altogether when Israel also stopped letting in building materials in retaliation for the discovery of a Hamas tunnel under its border in October. projects in the Gaza Strip. is implementing a package, Mont Blanc Pens Stockists Sydney worth $500 million, of construction projects such as schools, social housing and water and sanitation facilities.
On the black market, the price of a tonne of cement rose more than sevenfold since June to hit 2,900 shekels ($824), from 400 shekels.
For the first time since 1995, Hamas will not be sponsoring annual Dec. 14 celebrations of its founding. The cancellation, Hamas said in a statement, was decided "in acknowledgment of the difficult conditions our people are living in".
In public, Gazans still tend to rally to Hamas, whose die hard ethos of conflict with Israel is reinforced by the sense of siege. Hamas says it is seeking other sources of support.
"We are sparing no effort to help our people exit the current crisis. We are speaking to every country and every party in order to find a solution," said Ghazi Hamad, deputy foreign minister for the Gaza government. Talks were under way with Cairo over the fuel and power crisis, and Gaza had appealed to states further afield like Qatar for aid, he said.
Hamas also tried to mend ties with Iran, a former patron that scaled back funding for the Palestinian Islamists after Hamas quit its headquarters in Damascus out of opposition to President Bashar al Assad, Iran's ally.
At home, Hamas has shown little tolerance for large scale dissent. Human rights groups accuse its police of breaking up demonstrations under the pretext that organisers did not obtain proper licenses.
A Gaza group modelling itself on Tamarud ("Rebellion"), an Egyptian movement that agitated against the Muslim Brotherhood, abandoned plans for a mass rally on Nov. 11 citing fears for participants' safety.
Before Egypt's tunnel crackdown, the Gaza economy had been recovering from the destruction of last year's brief war, according to local and international statistics. It grew at a rate of 12 percent in the first quarter of 2013, the World Bank said, in contrast to the Palestinian economy in the West Bank, which contracted by 0.6 percent.
