The airport with no planes

[Violet_Crumble]

Chris McGrea in Gaza airport
Thursday April 13, 2006
The Guardian

Tawfiq Musmar takes up his place behind the lost luggage desk at Gaza international airport each morning, checking all is in order at the baggage carousel before wandering off to spend much of the day chatting with the "land hostesses" at the check-in counters.
Not a single flight has landed since Israeli army bulldozers tore up the runway in 2001 at the beginning of the Palestinian uprising, and Mr Musmar wonders how long he will be paid to do nothing. "There were lots of flights to all the Arab capitals, even Moscow," he said. "Now we get paid but these are not real jobs. Maybe now the jobs are going to disappear like the planes."

For five years the Gaza airport staff have collected their salaries from the Palestinian Authority, not because they earned them but because so many other people depend on the money to survive.

Mr Musmar, 43, earns about £250 a month from which he supports his parents and children. At the check-in desk, Reem Nisreen is paid about £140 a month which pays the rent and feeds her unemployed husband, two children and members of her extended family.

The wages of every one of the PA's 152,000 workers are paid in part from about $1bn (£573m) a year in foreign aid. European and American donors long ago accepted that while they were subsidising many real jobs, such as medical staff and teachers, they were also paying for what amounted to work-for-welfare. Those wages came to be a crucial part of an economy that has contracted by one-third through the intifada.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1752731,00.html