Fighting poverty in Gaza demands developmental interventions

By: Omar Shaban

The Gaza Strip grows poorer with every sunrise. Its middle class — the class that plays an important role in preserving the balance and cohesion of a healthy society — is withering, while the stratum of the poor and destitute swells until it has become the majority. All the written reports issued locally and internationally confirm that more than two-thirds of the Gaza Strip's residents are poor and unable to secure the minimum requirements of a dignified life. Likewise, a large share of those working for low wages fall within the stratum of the poor. These reports are borne out by the evidence on the ground: the spread of begging, the emergence of new forms of social deviance and criminal offences, falling marriage rates and rising divorce rates — especially among the newly married — and rising dropout rates from school and university education. Not to mention the great growth in the concepts and behaviours of extremism and rejection of the other. No doubt the blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip and the repeated wars are fundamental causes of these tragic conditions — as are the great decline in private and institutional investment, the shrinking of international support for the civil and international institutions working in the Gaza Strip, and the flight of local capital and human talent.

But this does not negate that the relief-support programmes implemented in the Gaza Strip for several years have failed to lower the poverty rate or even freeze it. This article proposes that the volume of cash and in-kind assistance that has entered the Gaza Strip, added to the revenues collected locally, is large — and could have been deployed far better. Before entering the heart of the matter, note must be made of the debate that sometimes runs between “relief and development” — a debate that is mostly unscientific. In scientific and practical reality there is no separation between them at all: every intervention, whatever it is, joins the two dimensions — the relief dimension to meet an immediate need, and the developmental to meet a future one. Giving a fish is necessary to obtain the protein and energy that make learning and practising fishing possible later. A child receiving three meals a day is a necessity for building a sound body and mind. Building a theatre provides thousands of job opportunities and cash incomes for those who build it.

In the case of the Gaza Strip, as everyone knows, it was necessary to look for interventions that achieve the relief and developmental dimensions in balance. By way of comparison, one can easily observe the enormous difference in developmental effects and sustainability between the projects rehabilitating Salah al-Din Street and the Corniche road — which changed the face and heart of the Gaza Strip — and the youth-marriage projects, which created endless social problems. Relief projects exist to be temporary and dedicated to very vulnerable strata; they can form no substitute for the other interventions.

In this article I will give an example of the developmental effects that could be achieved by injecting 30 million dollars monthly into developmental interventions with long-term effect. Here are some proposals, by way of example not enumeration:-

• Building schools: the Gaza Strip suffers a shortage of one hundred schools because of the blockade and the barring of construction materials for long years, which has caused enormous crowding in classrooms; there is likewise a need to build 15–20 new schools yearly to meet ordinary population growth. The average cost of building a school is one million dollars. With an injection of 30 million dollars monthly, 20–25 new schools could be built each month (220 schools yearly).
• Paving roads: hundreds of kilometres of main, municipal, and agricultural roads still need paving, rehabilitation, and improvement. The average cost of paving a road is 1 million dollars per kilometre. By allocating 30 million dollars monthly, 20–25 kilometres could be paved each month — 220 kilometres yearly. This alone would suffice to change the face and heart of the Gaza Strip. Paving and rehabilitating roads is one of the marks of urbanity; it reduces pollution, improves public health, strengthens economic activity, and is among the necessities of sustainable development.
• Cleaning, beautifying, and planting the Gaza Strip's seashore: this project is no less important than building schools. It means dedicating green areas and small gardens along the seashore from Beit Hanoun to Rafah, with the removal of encroachments and debris — turning the sea road from what is mostly a dumping ground for waste and construction debris into a green garden running the length of the Gaza Strip. Thousands of young people could be employed in this project, which would beautify the Gaza Strip and create a sound, healthy environment fit for tourism especially and for the other economic activities.
• Restoring thousands of modest dwellings in the camps and the crowded quarters of the cities of Gaza, Khan Younis, and Rafah, and in the informal areas too. This improves housing conditions and public health for tens of thousands of families in the Strip. The right to clean housing is one of the economic and social rights enshrined locally and internationally. Such an intervention in home restoration would bring back to life hundreds of small companies, contractors, and craftsmen left idle by the freeze in construction activity. It would likewise improve public health and reduce violence within homes.
• Supporting and employing thousands of family and very small enterprises — commercial, industrial, and touristic — through contributing a reasonable share of wages, representing developmental backing for these enterprises.

Certainly it is not logical to spend all the international assistance in one field only; a plan must be developed proposing varied interventions at the same time — building some schools, paving some roads, and restoring a few hundred homes within a multi-programme plan applied over many years. To confirm this vision's validity: school-building and road-paving projects contribute no less than 30–40% of total cost to direct and indirect labour. By a simple calculation: paving a kilometre of road costs a million dollars, a third of which goes to the workers — meaning the payment of a 400-dollar salary to 250 workers and engineers for three months. Another example: building a school costs a million dollars, a third of it for workers and engineers — meaning the payment of a 400-dollar salary to 100 workers and engineers for nine months.

The developmental effect of these interventions should be strengthened by reinforcing reliance on the local product or input — for example, using locally manufactured tiles instead of ceramic — and by stipulating intensified reliance on labour and reduced use of machinery as far as possible.

And since the construction sector intersects with dozens of other economic activities, activating the construction sector helps greatly in activating economic activity: many enterprises would be able to flourish, realise profits, and then pay taxes thereafter.

An important point here: such qualitative interventions within an integrated plan would encourage many Western governments and international institutions, which find cash funding awkward, to step in and help support such interventions. The existence of this integrated plan withdraws the justification from some international interventions carried out in the Gaza Strip without cohering with the population's real needs.