From afar, Gaza’s markets may appear to have regained some semblance of normalcy. Fruits, vegetables, and meat have reappeared after months of scarcity, and shelves are no longer as empty as they once were. However, a closer look at the lives of ordinary citizens reveals a starkly different reality: goods are available, but many families cannot afford them.
At the beginning of the war, some residents had money, but they couldn’t find anything to buy. Today, many goods have flooded the markets after the money ran out. The bombing destroyed homes and sources of income, displacement consumed what little savings families had left, salaries were eroded, and then the banks, the liquidity crisis, fees, and monopolies tightened the noose.
For example, an employee receives a salary that barely covers food and medicine, only to discover that the bank has deducted more than half of it for loan repayments that may not even amount to a fraction of the deducted sum. Thus, the salary ceases to be a means of protecting the family and becomes a new avenue for draining its resources. In contrast, banks cite their contractual rights, but the question remains: what about the human right to life? How can an employee who has lost their home or source of income be treated as if they were living a stable life?
These institutions have profited for years from their clients’ money, and they should have shown some responsibility in times of disaster.
In Gaza, the cycle of depletion doesn’t stop at banks and liquidity. The occupation restricts the entry of goods to a limited number of merchants, estimated at only ten, and imposes exorbitant fees under what are locally known as “coordination fees.” These costs are not borne by the merchant alone, but are passed on to the consumer in the form of inflated prices.
Thus, the citizen pays the price of the siege twice: once when goods are withheld from them, and again when they arrive burdened with the costs of coordination and monopoly. Therefore, markets may be full, but this abundance does not translate into consumption for citizens, because the price has become a new barrier no less harsh than the absence of the goods themselves.
Gaza is not asking for privileges, but rather that money not become a useless number, and that food not be displayed behind a barrier that the hungry cannot cross. For hunger is not always the absence of food; it can also be the absence of justice that enables people to access it.
