Young bear the burden of Israel’s siege of Gaza

Children work to help families hit by rife unemployment and devastating wars.

At just 15, Haisam Momen and his cousin Karam Habeed should be in school but are forced to sell balloons in central Gaza. Kate Shuttleworth for The National

GAZA CITY // Haisam Momen and Karam Habeeb are almost hidden by the dozens of balloons they are trying to sell for just under Dh1 each

The Palestinian cousins, both only 15 years old, dropped out of school to help support their families. They work eight-hour days selling balloons in Gaza City’s parks, shopping centres and outside restaurants such as the upscale Mazaj, where a pasta dish costs more than their daily income of about Dh21 each.

Haisam and Karam are just two of an estimated 104,000 children forced into labour in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, according to a United States department of labour report. With nearly half of the adult population out of work, the World Banks says Gaza’s unemployment rate is probably the highest in the world.

After Hamas won the 2006 election in Gaza and seized control from Fatah, the leading secular Palestinian party, Israel blockaded Gaza by air, land and sea. Unemployment climbed, and today, after three wars in under six years, the economy is on its knees.

The number of Gazan children and youth forced into labour rose dramatically after the 51-day war in 2014, which left more than 2,200 Palestinians and 73 Israelis dead.

Some children lost one or both parents in the war. Others have parents who were injured and are now unable to work.

By law, the minimum working age in both Palestinian territories is 15, and 18 for hazardous work involving chemicals or dangerous machinery, but this is not enforced in Gaza.

In the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has jurisdiction only over the parts known as Area A and B. Area C, which comprises about 60 per cent of the territory, is under Israeli military control.

Jamil Momen, 21, and his younger brother Haisam, 15, live in the Shati refugee camp in northern Gaza. Jamil wants to go to university but has to sell balloons and rides on an electric car for children instead to support the family because his parents are unemployed.

Inside their two-room house, Jamil checks the lights on the battery-powered toy car that he will sell rides on that night.

Jamil married recently and his wife is now pregnant, putting pressure on Haisam to leave school to help support their 13-member household.

Nearby, in central Gaza, Jamil and Haisam’s cousins are also working to support their extended family.

Twin brothers Ehsan and Karam Habeeb, 15, have dropped out of school because their father, Fayad, suffers from severe depression and anxiety and cannot work full-time.

Fayad, a father of 10, said that before the second intifada broke out in 2000 he worked in Tel Aviv as a tailor and earned 6,000 shekels (Dh5,667) a month.

As he speaks, his four-year-old son, Moen, shuffles across the floor – despite four operations, the muscles in his lower legs still do not work.

So Ehsan and Karam, along with their 11-year-old brother Zuheir, must work selling balloons.

“I’d like my children to stay in school, but they are behind already after they left, so it might be too late,” Fayad said.

Asked what he thought would improve the lives of Gazans, Fayad said: “We need to be reunited with Israel. Since the ties were cut we’ve gone back 40 years – I can honestly say that the best 13 years of my life so far were when I was able to work inside Israel. I had money and could travel – I had a life”.

The US department of labour report, released in 2014, says there are no programmes to prevent or eliminate the worst forms of child labour in the Palestinian territories. It found the PA had failed to ratify international conventions on child labour after it acceded to the UN Conventions on the Rights of the Child. The report reveals that children in Gaza were paid to carry goods through Gaza’s smuggling tunnels until they were closed in 2014. The report documents Hamas training children as young as 12 for this, and one case in which a child was used as a human shield and another as an informant by Israeli forces in the last war.

Maher Al Tabbaa, a Gazan economist, said the reality of child labour in Gaza was perhaps one of the worst in the world in that children are forced to work because their parents cannot.

“Child labour will only be reduced if there is a proper social security for poor Palestinian families,” he said.

“There need to be concerted efforts from all government institutions and private and civil society to fight the phenomenon of child labour and to intensify awareness,” he says.