MP Jamal al-Khudari has stated that 80% of the factories in Gaza were fully or partially closed due to the continued siege.
Khudari, who is Head of the Popular Committee against the Siege, said in a press statement, on Saturday, that the Israeli authorities are banning hundreds of raw material items from entering Gaza, causing the factories to stop working.
Al Ray reports that Khudari has insisted that “the Israeli occupation carefully decides the raw material items to be denied access to Gaza so that Gaza economy would be brought to a standstill and, thus, thousands of workers and engineers active in construction sector laid off.”
Gaza has been under an extreme economic blockade since 2007. Israel has since allowed limited quantities of construction supplies destined for international projects.
The smuggling tunnels which Gazans were forced to rely on for their needs, mainly of building materials and fuels, were semi-completely destroyed following Egyptian military’s disposition of president Morsi, in July of 2013.
