Abid Razzaq Ouda faces intimidation by Palestinian militants, the
Israeli authorities, and the dire consequences of the economic blockade
of Gaza

The field is planted with shoulder-high rows of corn and is so close
to Israel that the tall concrete boundary wall is well within sight,
along with the Israeli military jeeps on their regular patrols into
northern Gaza.

For Abid Razzaq Ouda, 40, who farms this land,
this brings its own complications. His field is sometimes used by
Palestinian militants to fire rockets or mortars into southern Israel
and the Israeli military mounts so many operations here that the
farmers dare not risk going out at night for fear of being hit.

Last
month, after militants used the field for a rocket attack, the Israeli
military sent in armoured bulldozers which carved sweeping paths
through his corn, tearing down the crops and wrecking the extensive
plastic irrigation pipes. Then a bulldozer demolished the cement hut
housing the water pump in the corner of the field. Ouda, still heavily
in debt from the shortfall in his earlier strawberry crop, has no money
to repair the pump and so this season’s half-matured corn is already
lost.

He is critical of the Israelis and of the militants too,
an indication that there is considerable, and perhaps growing,
frustration across Gaza with the armed groups who continue their
attacks on Israel. “The fighters are very bad for us,” Ouda said. “Many
times we have tried to talk to them but they just threaten us.”

Once
Ouda and his neighbouring farmers tried to stop a militant who stood in
their field to film a nearby attack. They seized his camera and drove
him away. Minutes later a large group of gunmen returned, took back the
camera and warned the farmers not to interfere again. “It was a very
bad day for us,” said Ouda. “Unfortunately the fighters do understand
the effect they are having on us, but they ignore it. They are very
young, the ones who come to fight, but they get paid for it.”

Even
without the militants and the Israeli raids, it is a very bad time to
be a farmer in Gaza. The agricultural industry is a pillar of the Gazan
economy but one that was reliant on exports and on the import of seeds,
fertilizers, pesticides and packaging materials. However, Israel has
mounted an ever-tightening economic blockade of Gaza, the land it calls
a “hostile territory”. All exports have been halted and imports are
restricted to a limited supply of humanitarian goods.

The World
Bank estimates that, as a direct result of the closures, Gaza’s two
biggest farming export industries – carnations and strawberries – saw
heavy losses last year of more than $6m (£3m) each. Now a fuel shortage
means many agricultural pumps and wells are no longer working, leaving
crops to wither and forcing up the price of food (the price of tomatoes
in Gaza City has risen six-fold).

Last September, Ouda planted
his fields with strawberries, taking a chance that the crossings might
re-open and allow his crop to earn a handsome return. It was a costly
gamble: the crossings remained shut and when they were briefly opened
for a special strawberry export to Europe there were such delays that
the crop wilted and he made a loss on the sale. On the local market,
strawberries sell for just a tenth of their export price, with the
result that Ouda still owes $30,000 from his strawberry season.

As
he speaks, a buyer arrives with a horse and cart to negotiate a price
to cut down what is left of the corn crop to use as animal fodder.
After several minutes of protracted argument, Ouda sells the crop for
400 shekels (£60), a crop that he calculates cost him more than 3,000
shekels to plant and maintain.

“I’m not happy about that but I
want to be done with it,” he said. It is the first time in a lifetime
of farming that he has ever sold a crop for fodder. Now he must rely on
the small savings he has to feed his wife and six children, the
youngest of whom is just three weeks old, until the autumn farming
season comes round.

Ouda works the land but could not possibly
afford to buy it – a dunam of land, 1,000 square metres, sells for at
least £12,000. He was born here in Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza, and
took a correspondence course in geography at an Egyptian university
hoping to become a teacher. But that was at a time when Israel still
had a complete military and administrative occupation of Gaza with
thousands of settlers and soldiers deployed across the strip – anyone
working for the state risked being branded a collaborator. So instead
he worked in Israel as an agricultural labourer, where he earned a
reasonable wage. This ended in 1994, when the rules on Palestinian
labour permits changed and Ouda was regarded as too young to enter
Israel. Since then he has farmed the fields of others in northern Gaza.

For
a while in the late 1990s, Gaza’s farmers prospered, until 2000 and the
start of the second intifada, the Palestinian uprising, which brought
more conflict and more restrictions. Ouda is not a Hamas supporter – he
voted for the rival Fatah movement in elections two years ago. He cites
Hamas’ failings but is also critical of the way the factions have been
locked in draining internal conflict.

“Hamas has control and
imposed security but on the other hand the siege really squeezed us and
they couldn’t deal with it,” he said. “We just want to concentrate on
our lives. Everyone in Gaza wants the crossings to open and to breathe
freely.”