Dreams of survival: How battle has restructured Gaza’s job market | Israel-Palestine battle News | USAEMALL.com

Gaza City – On a street corner in Gaza City’s Remal market, Abdulrahman al-Awadi stands inside a small tarpaulin-made tent that he set up as a mobile phone charging station, a job that emerged during the war and has since become his livelihood.

Al-Awadi has hung his artwork above shelves that hold mobile phones and charging units.

He checks the sunlight and the efficiency of the solar panel mounted above.

The 25-year-old, who graduated from Al-Aqsa University’s fine arts faculty two years before Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza began, never imagined he would end up standing on his street, watching phones being handed to him one after another to charge for one or two shekels.

“Before the war, I worked in fine arts and graphic design, and I was still taking my first steps in the world of exhibitions and advertising,” al-Awadi told Al Jazeera.

“Today, as you can see, I work behind a small ‘charging point’ near my home, trying to secure the bare-minimum income to get by.”

“I spent four university years in studios, working on art projects, exhibitions, and crafts. All of that has become memories, with no way back.”

During the war, al-Awadi was displaced with his family to southern Gaza for a year and a half. There, he tried to hold onto some of his experience in fine arts and design, but he was too distracted.

“I tried to go on YouTube and watch art exhibitions and artists’ work. I tried to refresh my knowledge, to draw and sketch,” he explained. “But everything around me was bombardment, destruction, and fear.”

Dreams disappear

Once al-Awadi was able to return to his home in Gaza City, he found that his drawings and tools had vanished. His room soon became a shelter for displaced relatives.

“[My drawings] were burned and destroyed in the shelling near our home. My tools, my colours, my studio… everything is gone,” he said.

He found himself forced to adapt, creating a new source of income from nothing.

“People come to charge their phones. One shekel [$0.30] per charge. Even a shekel is hard to find, because there’s almost no liquidity in the country.”

Survival economy

A-Awadi’s shift, from an artist to a participant in Gaza’s “survival economy”, illustrates a wider situation in which traditional professions have disappeared and new jobs, shaped by war and shortages, have emerged.

The economic situation in Gaza has sharply worsened since the war began, as widespread destruction, displacement, and the collapse of basic services have forced even skilled graduates to adapt to makeshift jobs.

With limited opportunities in their trained fields, many have turned to small-scale, often improvised work, such as charging phones, selling food and water, or providing essential services, to secure a daily income and support their families.

Rami al-Zaygh, an economic researcher who has conducted a study into the survival economy, told Al Jazeera that such make-shift professions have pulled many Palestinians “from the brink of certain death by providing a minimum level of income and meeting basic needs”.

“What has happened is that the war has pushed society back decades, bringing back professions that only a handful of people still practised, while also giving rise to jobs that had never previously existed in Gaza,” he said.

According to al-Zaygh, a common feature among these jobs is their simplicity, as they do not require specialised skills or advanced equipment.

“Most of this work is carried out using very basic tools, and relies on making use of any available resource for survival,” he added, noting that many such jobs show a degree of innovation, including finding ways of charging devices and batteries, or registering people on lists for aid.

These jobs are neither stable nor permanent, he said. “They are intermittent and constantly changing, shaped by the conditions of war itself, from bombardment and repeated displacement to instability, and are among the most difficult consequences of this war.”

These shifts reflect the collapse of Gaza’s economic structure. According to figures cited by al-Zaygh, the territory’s gross domestic product (GDP) has contracted by about 85 percent, while unemployment has surged to approximately 80 percent, with nearly the entire population now living below the poverty line.

Under these conditions, participation in the makeshift and unstable job market is no longer limited to a specific group, but has spread across all segments of society.

“Everyone has become involved in this economy – men and women, children and adults, students and graduates, even those with higher degrees – driven by necessity and desperation,” al-Zaygh said.

These jobs “emerged as an exceptional and temporary response in Palestinian life, but have developed over the course of the prolonged war, and may continue until the conditions that created them come to an end and stability returns”, he added.

‘Life here is merciless’

Mustafa Bulbul, 32, has also found himself working at a stall in Remal. He sells sweetcorn, working alongside his brother.

Mustafa, who holds a degree in business administration and used to work for a local company owned by relatives before the war, has lost everything he built in his professional life.

Now displaced from al-Shujayea in eastern Gaza City, he lives with his wife and three children in a tent near the market.

“I lost everything in the war… my home, my job, my profession. As you can see, I even lost my personal and academic identity,” Mustafa told Al Jazeera as he poured corn into cups for customers.

“Life here is merciless. As long as I have the responsibility of taking care of my children and family, I had to work in whatever job was available.”

Mustafa explained that work in business administration has become nearly nonexistent in Gaza.

“The company I worked for was destroyed, and its warehouses were destroyed as well. It’s now beyond the ‘yellow line’,” he said, referring to the areas of Gaza directly controlled by Israeli forces. “And it’s not the only one; thousands of private companies were destroyed during the war.

“The economy has completely collapsed. Anyone who finds any opportunity, even if it doesn’t suit them, takes it immediately.”

Even selling corn is a precarious business. Corn has periodically been unavailable in Gaza, alongside many other food items, especially during periods of famine brought on by Israeli restrictions on imports.

“We try to accept reality as much as we can, but things are fluctuating in a frightening way,” he said, describing the difficulty of securing not only corn but also cooking gas, which he recently replaced with charcoal and firewood.

“Everything is extremely expensive, and people’s purchasing power has dropped significantly,” he added, pointing to the chaos in market prices amid the shortages.

Despite everything, Mustafa continues to struggle to maintain a fragile balance between survival and dignity.

“I hope that one day, I can return to my previous job in business administration… to my good-looking clothes, my office, my old life… and that things improve, even a little.

“Everyone here is exhausted and worn down by life.”