Gaza's jobs crisis leaves Palestinians struggling to afford basics

Every morning, Mansour Mohammad Bakr sets out from the small rented room in Gaza City that he shares with his pregnant wife and two daughters.

- By Jason Burke and Seham Tantesh GAZA

The 23-year-old walks past the port where he once earned his living. Before the two-year war that devastated Gaza, Bakr was a fisher, sharing tackle and a boat with his father and brothers. Now his brothers are dead, his father is too old to work and his equipment was destroyed during the conflict.

Like hundreds of thousands of others across Gaza, Bakr needs a job.

"Money is the main means of survival in Gaza," he said. "Without it, a person cannot do anything. The limited aid that reaches us doesn’t replace our need for money in any way and doesn’t cover even the most basic living requirements."

Humanitarian organisations have ramped up aid distribution since October, when a ceasefire agreement came into effect, leading Israel to lift some of the heavy restrictions it imposed on aid and easing its delivery within Gaza.

In January, UN agencies and their partners reached about 1.6 million people with household-level general food assistance. The nonprofit World Central Kitchen is now serving 1m hot meals a day. But such assistance remains vastly insufficient and still covers only basic necessities. For everything else, Palestinians in Gaza need cash.