Traders hit by Gaza City taxes

[TomClash]

GAZA CITY // Radi Abdel Karim spends most of his days in an old hospital bed that he has somehow managed to squeeze into the corner of a shop space in a northern neighbourhood of Gaza City.

Mr Abdel Karim, 65, has been bedridden for more than 20 years, the result, he said, of a spinal cord injury. But he tries to supplement the earnings of relatives by selling old junk that others bring him.

“I make maybe 100 Israeli shekels a week,” said Mr Abdel Karim last week amid the discarded plastic, metal and other bits that lie scattered on the floor and on a couple of rickety shelves in his “shop”.

“Shop” is a somewhat grand description for the shabby concrete room where one entire corner is taken up by a specially installed but rusty old metal ramp on which Mr Abdel Karim can navigate his wheelchair.

But “shop” is exactly what the place has been designated by the Gaza City municipality, which is demanding that Mr Abdel Karim, along with all shop-owners in Gaza, begin to pay overdue small business licence fees.

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But the effort to pursue municipal dues comes in desperate times. The Israeli-imposed blockade on Gaza, now more than four years old, has forced 90 per cent of industry to close, stopped exports and prevented all but the most basic foodstuffs from entering. Poverty hovers around 65 per cent and unemployment is 43 per cent.

Chasing down arrears in this context is not popular.

“They are asking me to pay 900 Israeli shekels. How am I supposed to afford this?” said Mr Abdel Karim, who, along with four other shopkeepers gathered around him, said he would under normal circumstances pay.

“But we’re all under siege here. It’s not just Hamas,” he said.

Officials recently admitted that the government in Gaza is facing a financial crisis. Belts were tightened earlier in the year when the government, which always prided itself on paying wages on time, announced that it would only pay the full salaries of junior employees, while the rest would have to accept half their wages until coffers were restocked.

Compounding the government’s difficulties, the US Treasury in March froze the US-based assets of the Gaza-based Islamic National Bank, which the government uses to pay salaries. With other banks already under threat of sanction should they deal directly with the Hamas-run government, Jamal Nasser, a Hamas politician, conceded last Tuesday that “the government is facing a crisis”.

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