Journalist Maha Hussaini told the Middle East Eye: “A good action by a Gazan merchant has led to a debt write-off campaign.” It becomes strange in today's world, although the anthropologist David Graeber has shown that debt forgiveness has been cyclical since the first civilizations were built, at the request of social peace. It is true that the recommendation is repeated in all religions, both in those who worship Allah and in those of Christian God (“Forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors”...) but not much is practiced.

Osama Abu Dalal, reported Hussaine, decided in early January to eliminate debts to customers who were unable to pay their invoices in the shoe store he has in the Deir al-Balah refugee camp. “I can’t close my eyes to see how poverty is being imposed in my society. I know the parents who arrive very late, when the children are lying down, because they don’t know what to do to meet the growing needs they have suffered.”

You can still read on your Facebook page – translating Arabic machines – what you left written on 9 January: “Osama Zakaria Abu Dalal, owner of the Abu Dalal Shoe Store, asking for God’s mercy, announces that all customers will be forgiven the debts that still have outstanding, (...) for the economic situation we live in Gaza. This action will help other partner traders follow the same path to alleviate the suffering of our people. God protects you and us.”

In a few hours, the debate was heated on Facebook, and it was proposed to organize a campaign around that decision. Activists and journalists began to interrogate the other merchants. Traola also spread, which can translate “Forgive and you will be rewarded.”

Some merchants, like Abu Dalal, started to forgive debts to their backward customers. During the campaign others decided to offer free of charge to the most needy their goods, food, suits, medicines, hot meals, stoves, bedding...

The promoters estimate that in two short weeks, debts worth almost EUR 200,000 would be written off on Gaza territory. In the case of Abu Dalal, he does not recognize any numbers, “not even his wife.” The journalist who asked him, however, gave him a hint: That the amount you have forgiven is as high as anything saved since you started working at age 18.

More innovative ways of participating in the debt amnesty campaign soon began to spread. Al Helou International Hospital announced yesterday that it will offer 120 couples looking for babies free in vitro reproduction treatment and discounts on other services to families in need. Although it is true that in Gaza public health services are free, they are completely blocked by the crisis, without maintenance of machinery, with problems of electricity supply, with waiting lists of one and a half years in any operation...

Some lawyers have also begun to offer little legal advice to those who are unable to access it. Young lawyer Muhammed Seyam explains to Hussaini why he is involved in the campaign: “The people here are disappointed with local and international leaders; two million people live in siege for more than ten years and those responsible for taking action to deal with the collective condemnation imposed on them are not able to do so. The time has come for people to adapt on their own.”

No escape

In July 2017, a UN report explained that the lives of the two million inhabitants of Gaza, including 1.3 million refugees, were becoming more and more complicated and that Gaza had become an uninhabitable place.

According to the European Monitoring Centre for Human Rights, 39% of the population of Gaza lives below the poverty line, twice as much as in the West Bank, by the Israeli siege and by the permanent closure of Gaza's footsteps with Egypt.

The American New York Times said last February that “the fear that the situation will explode after falling into the financial crisis in Gaza has spread.” David M. Halbfinger has presented as an example of a disaster to Muhammad Abu Shaaban, 45 years old, an official retired two months ago by the Palestinian Authority and the Lehendakari National Guard. You have to wait up to six hours in queue to receive the monthly salary: EUR 232 currently replacing the previous 1,075.

His life radically changes to Abu Shaaban. It doesn't come to pay for your child's high school tuition. Buy your wife vegetables for meals, no more meat. There are a lot of things that are like this. The journalist has found common fathers and mothers preparing the pods and vegetables that until now were given to the animals in the food. Gaza jails, for their part, are increasingly complying with traders and traders who are unable to pay their arrears.

Israel has blocked the departure of Gaza for a dozen years, drastically reducing the entry of food and supplies of all kinds to the local population. The Jews have not, however, succeeded in getting the Gazans to withdraw their vote to Hamas, if that is what they intended. For years he has been able to dodge the siege with the tunnels excavated to the Sinai and, above all, to Egypt. After the coup, Egypt has hardened its behaviour with regard to Hamas and Israel is sealing with a valuable underground barrier all over the Gaza border, forcibly cancelling the broken tunnels inside.

The situation has been greatly aggravated since last year, as the confrontation between Hamas and the Palestinian National Authority (ANP) hardened. Mahmoud Abbas, to press Hamas, stopped paying for the fuel from the Gaza power plant, just as he paid for the electricity that Israel sold to Gaza. And the officials who are still on the payroll in Gaza, they made very important wage cuts.

By pressure or whatever, Hamas came to a new pact with Abbas in the autumn of last year. But the discrepancies were quickly revived and by the end of the year things got worse again. If Abbas has lowered his wages by between 30 and 40 per cent to his 60,000 officials in Gaza, Hamas’s 40,000 employees have been unpaid for months.

He has also interviewed Ahmed, 42, a taxi driver, who lives in the Al Shati refugee camp in the south of the country. He had not paid an income of EUR 117 for the apartment for six months, after increasing gasoline from the taxi to EUR 1.4. The owner of the house claims to have forgiven the deferred debt: “I am grateful. In winter I will be able to hold her in my warm family.”