Wasted years: Jobless youngsters collect rubbish for living in besieged Gaza

Every morning, Ali mounts a donkey carriage and heads toward one of Gaza city's rubbish dumps near a central football field to rummage with his naked hands for plastic waste.

At the doorway of his house in Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza Strip, Ali's donkey stands waiting to go out on a daily trip. Wearing his usual dirty work clothes, Ali said he felt "jealous watching children wearing clean uniforms on their way to school."

Ali said he felt ashamed when his friends saw him searching through the rubbish with flying insects around. He usually sells the plastic waste to recycling factories at the end of a day of hard work.

Now aged 21, Ali has been doing this for four years since he was forced to leave school to support a family of 11 members, after his father could no longer do the job due to an injury.

Israeli troops sealed off the Gaza Strip in 2007, restricting imports of basic food, medicine and aid materials from international relief organizations.

The closure of the coastal enclave, a home to some 1.5 million people, has taken toll on the poor whose number have increased from 100,000 to over 300,000 this year, according to a new study by the UN Relief and Works Agency.

Anyone entering Ali's house has to trample on plastic bottles and walk through the rancid smell. It may be hard for visitors, but Ali's family is used to the situation, given that the rubbish is their only source of income.

Despite the embarrassment he feels about his work, Ali is proud that his sisters are studying at schools thanks to his earning for the family.

"After school, my sisters help me clean the plastic waste before selling it to the recycling factories," he said. "But I am sad that sometimes my younger brothers have to come with me to collect the waste as I cannot always do it on my own."

Ali's father, Talal Al Batran, 47, spoke nostalgically about the past when he was a construction worker in Israel. His income then was good and his children did not have to work.

Talal is one of tens of thousands of Gazans who lost their jobs in Israel due to the Israeli closure after the inter-Palestinian fighting in 2007.

"This business I started with my sons does not require capital or investment. It is better than begging, dealing drugs or stealing," Talal said. "Because of the siege, nothing gets inside Gaza, so we have to recycle our waste to be able to produce new goods."

Ali said he was sorry that he had to leave school. "I have no other option but to meet the daily needs of the family. I wish I could do something better. I feel humiliated when I have to dig in garbage in the midst of bad smells."

After cleaning all the plastic waste in water and drying it in the sun, Ali loads the clean waste on the carriage to go to the factories for trivial income.

"I know the price is cheap for my family to survive and the factory owners want to make a fortune out of our misery," Ali said. "The money they pay me is less than half the original price of the raw plastic, but I have no choice."

Source: Xinhua