KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip – In an upstairs room behind the shattered walls of a Gaza building, sewing machines hum as men work at crowded tables in a determined effort by a Palestinian businessman to support the enclave’s battered economy after nine months of relentless Israeli bombardment.
Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have lost their homes. Shops, markets, and factories lie in ruins following the Israeli military campaign, which was launched in response to the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
Inhabitants of Gaza, now largely residing in tents or communal shelters, struggle to afford the scarce food and goods available in makeshift street markets set up among the debris.
“I opened this factory for the displaced, so they can work and so I can create work for (them),” said Omar Samer Shaat, whose original factory in Rafah, southern Gaza, was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike.
Shaat salvaged machinery, fabric, thread, and other materials from the rubble of his previous factory. He established a new workshop in nearby Khan Younis, offering jobs to tailors who had been displaced by the ongoing conflict. Shaat estimates his economic losses due to the war at $6 million.
Inside the factory, men work diligently at tables under lightbulbs strung from the ceiling. Clothes are meticulously laid out on the floor, with scissors and balls of thread within reach. With Israel’s stringent siege on Gaza, allowing only limited humanitarian supplies, ordinary goods like clothes are scarce.
“The border crossings have been shut for some time. Ready-made clothes do not enter. Neither does fabric or anything. We decided to open this factory in this shelled house so it can produce for the people,” Shaat explained.
Sami Hassouna, one of the tailors in Shaat’s workshop, said he was forced to leave his home and is now sheltering near Al-Aqsa University, about an hour away. “We retrieved the machinery, fabric, and needles, all of that, from under the rubble,” he said. “But we need continuity, and this requires the entry of new raw material,” he added.