In recent years, Gaza’s workshops had dwindled to about 100, employing about 4,000 people and shipping about 30,000-40,000 items a month to Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
By January, three months into the war, the World Bank estimated that 79 percent of Gaza’s private sector establishments had been partially or totally destroyed.
Even the factories that are still standing have ground to a halt, after months without electricity in Gaza. Any fuel that arrives for generators is mainly used for hospitals and United Nations facilities such as warehouses and aid-supply points.
In these conditions, finding new clothes is a rare event.
“Some women have been wearing the same headscarf for the past 10 months,” Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, the UN agency in charge of Palestinian refugees, posted on X.
Wearing the same clothes all the time is not just unpleasant, it is a health hazard. With limited water to wash them, disease-spreading lice abound.
Ahmed al-Masri, 29, left his home in the north of Gaza at the start of the war.
Today in Khan Yunis, in the south, he says he does not have any spare shoes or clothes.
“My shoes are extremely damaged. I’ve had them repaired at least 30 times, each time paying 10 times more than before the war,” he says, his gaunt face burnt by the sun.
Walking barefoot
With two-thirds of Gaza’s population living in poverty even before the war, many people were forced to sell their clothes once the conflict broke out and tanked the economy further.
But “there are no more shoes or clothes to sell”, says Omar Abu Hashem, 25, who was displaced from Rafah, on the Egyptian border, to Khan Yunis further north.
Abu Hashem left his home in such a rush that he was unable to take anything with him. He has been wearing the same pair of shoes for five months, but only every other day.
“I share my pair of shoes with my brother-in-law,” he explains.
On the days when he goes barefoot, he fears the worst, tiptoeing around the waste and rubble that carry diseases and contamination of all kinds.
Ahmed al-Masri, meanwhile, just wants some soap to wash his only T-shirt and pair of trousers.
“I have been wearing the same clothes for nine months. I have nothing else. I quickly wash my T-shirt and then I wait for it to dry,” he says.
“And all this, without soap or detergent.”
