Majed Shrafi, 30
Barber behind a single chair; his shop was bombed
Tal al-Hawa, Gaza City
< ₪50a day: under half of the ₪80–100 his family needs
The Progressive, 9 Oct
Gaza City
Gaza City · 8 reports · 6 people
People in Gaza City
Rasha Al-Dos, 44
Teaching again, in a classroom with a tarp for one wall
Pay not reported
CBC News, 7 Oct
Hilal al-Zuwaidi, 34
Runs a phone-charging point; a builder and fruit trader before the war
₪1a phone; ₪2 if he lends the charger
Middle East Eye, 7 Oct
Mahmoud Dweima
Olive grower; every tree bulldozed
Shuja’iyya, Gaza City
$13–15ka year from oil before the war; nothing now
Mondoweiss, 6 Oct
Warda Aliwa, 38
Unpicks flour sacks into bags in a WFP cash-for-work factory
₪1,000a month, three-month shift
CBC News, 2 Oct
Khaled al-Kurd, 50
Builds shelves from aid pallets; lost his sewing business
₪1,000a month
CBC News, 2 Oct
Every report
Newest first. A story told on Pal-Online opens here; the rest open the original report.
Flour sacks become tote bags, and aid pallets become shelves
In a Gaza City factory run by the UN World Food Programme since April, about 113 women and 20 men work three-month shifts unpicking empty flour sacks into bags and turning pallets into furniture that is given away. The pay is 1,000 shekels a month.
In Gaza, shops refuse worn cash or charge 10% to take it
Muhammad Hussam, 38, displaced from Shuja'iyya, had 200 shekels of aid cash refused for apples; a second seller would take it only with a 10% cut. At the height of the war people paid up to 50% to turn bank balances into cash; Ramallah expert Sami al-Khaldi cites a 6,000-shekel cap above which payments must be electronic. Gaza's media office says refusing legal notes or charging to accept them has been criminalised.
A barber earns less than half of what his family needs each day
After his shop was bombed and his home destroyed, Shrafi cut hair in tents and beside ruined buildings before relatives and neighbours helped him open a small shop again. He supports five children.
A widowed teacher returns to a classroom with a tarp for a wall
Al-Dos lost her husband in the war and went back to teaching to support her four children, who live with her in a parking garage partitioned with tarps and wood. Her classroom is mostly intact except one blown-out wall covered by a tarp painted with the alphabet. She says about a quarter of the pupils she taught before the war did not survive.
A builder's weekly wage is now a month's takings at a phone-charging stall
With no grid, al-Zuwaidi charges phones for one or two shekels each, but generator power costs 30–35 shekels per kilowatt-hour and many customers pay on credit, with some families owing 300–400 shekels. In the same report, former construction worker Nihad al-Skafi, 36, now queues for water and depends on charity food parcels, waiting about 40 days for a cooking-gas refill.
Two dozen eggs 30 shekels, one potato 5: more food in Gaza, few who can buy
Mohammed Barghout, 49, a father of four, found eggplants, potatoes and tomatoes in Gaza City's market but left with three potatoes; he says feeding his family breakfast would cost about 500 shekels. In Al-Maqousi camp, Mohamed Al-Arabeed, 44, is patching the 2,000-shekel tent his family of eight has lived in for three years.
Olive grower's $13,000 a year is gone with every tree
Dweima's land east of Gaza City, near what is now the 'yellow line', was completely bulldozed. Ministry of Agriculture official Shaher al-Rifi says olive land fell from about 44,000 dunams in 2022 to about 5,000, only nine presses operate, and the season once created more than 22,000 daily work opportunities in picking, transport, pressing and sales.
A tailor who lost his business now builds shelves from aid pallets
Al-Kurd lost his wife, his daughter, his home and his sewing business in the war. In the same WFP programme, men dismantle the wood pallets that carried aid, sand the usable boards and turn them into furniture for families and schools.
Other places in the reports
Each opens everything checked from there.