Israel's economic blockade stops Gaza's strawberry-farmers selling their crop

Almost all of Gaza's turbulent story is bound up with Jamil Abu Hmaideh's strawberry fields here in the far north of the strip. Between two wispy clouds high in the blue sky above us, two Israeli Apache helicopters hover on the look-out for the Qassam rocket-launching crews as we bite into the luscious, perfectly ripened fruit Mr Hmaideh has picked for us. At the end of the neat plantation rows are the high sandbanks just inside the Gaza town of Beit Lahiya's border with Israel, the ones from which the military bulldozers descended when they last ploughed up one of his fields before he started planting at the end of August. Hanging on the wall in his two-room farm station is a "martyr portrait" of his 21-year-old son, Nael, who was killed in May, a non-combatant casualty of the savage infighting between Fatah and Hamas.

But what is preoccupying Mr Hmaideh as he surveys his three acres of strawberry plants in this isolated and often dangerous place is another peculiarly Gazan tragedy, a function of the absolute economic and commercial blockade to which it has been subjected by the total closure by Israel of the main cargo crossing at Karni since June, after Hamas seized control of the Strip. His entire crop of low-insecticide, high-quality fruit, scheduled for export from this very weekend across the border into Israel and beyond, much of it en route to upscale retailers in Europe, would normally fetch him the £3-£4 per kilogram he needs to break even let alone make a modest profit. This year it is destined at best to be sold at a loss he cannot possibly sustain – for 25p or less in what promises to be a saturated as well as impoverished local market. More...