GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Every morning, Atta al-Hindi goes to the sites of destroyed houses in the Shajaiya neighborhood in central Gaza, destroyed in the 2014 Israeli war. Hindi extracts whatever building materials he can from the rubble and sells them to small local recycling factories to support his family of four.
The 3 to 4 million tons of scattered rubble have created work for hundreds of unemployed Gazans who extract iron bars and gravel from the rubble. At the end of 2014, the unemployment rate in Gaza reached 43%, the highest in the world, according to a report issued by the World Bank in March 2015.