In Gaza, Even Poetry and Toilets Aren’t Safe From Thieves
As he perused a market selling everything from stolen children’s shoes to battered plumbing pipes, Mahmoud al-Jabri was surprised to find something familiar: his own book collection.
Among the collection was his first published work of poems, with his handwriting scrawled along the margins. Even more shocking than seeing the book he had toiled for years to create was that the vendor wanted a paltry 5 shekels, or about $1, for it.
The salesman suggested using the pages for kindling.
“I was torn between two feelings,” he said, “laughter and bitterness.”
In Gaza, even poetry books can become a source of profit for enterprising thieves. A pervasive lawlessness has emerged from the rubble of cities obliterated since Israel launched its all-out offensive on the enclave in retaliation for the Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7.
“Thieves’ markets,” as they are called by locals, have proliferated across Gaza, selling loot plundered from homes, businesses and even hospitals. With Israel blocking the flow of most goods into Gaza, the markets have become important places for finding household necessities. And visits to the markets have become a weary ritual for Gazans seeking to reclaim stolen pieces of their lives.
Some, like Mr. Al-Jabri, even stumble upon belongings they had not yet realized were missing.
In his hometown in southern Gaza, Khan Younis, where the central market was reduced to rubble by Israeli strikes, vendors sell stolen hospital supplies and clothes on plastic tarps or wooden carts alongside produce sellers on the main road out of the battered city.
In Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, the bustling trade in stolen goods happens next to the traditional street market. Once a tangled network of streets awash in the smell of spices and the chants of vendors hawking fruit, that market has been reduced to a single thoroughfare as most commerce has dried up under the Israeli blockade.
Now, it is the thieves’ markets that thrive, teeming with nervous energy as crowds mill about piles of loot.
Shoppers and vendors look around suspiciously as they go about their business. Sometimes, families forced to buy their own possessions back at exorbitant prices are overcome with rage at sellers who claim to have no idea where the goods came from. The arguments can come to blows, residents say, and, occasionally, even gunfire.
The lawlessness is felt everywhere in Gaza. Many increasingly destitute people have been driven to petty thievery.
Prisons abandoned by Hamas jailers are now empty, and felons roam free, residents say. Criminal gangs band together to strip bare hospital and university buildings, or ambush the few trucks that enter with food and supplies.
Before the current war, Hamas-affiliated police patrolled the streets and kept a lid on crime. But they have now all but disappeared, targets of Israel’s military as it undertakes its aim to “dismantle Hamas military and administrative capabilities.”
Israel’s 10-month war in Gaza — and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to articulate a postwar plan — has essentially created a power vacuum in the enclave, though without any alternative leadership in place, Hamas has been able to regroup in some areas and re-emerge as a military force.
In some southern regions of Gaza, Hamas officials have also tried to re-exert influence by sending members to patrol markets for price gouging. Yet Hamas itself stands accused by locals of profiting off the chaos, with suspicions high that its militants are somehow affiliated with armed gangs that sell their services to protect warehouses or goods.
Communal trust has also been depleted. Locals trade stories of business partners who robbed them, or of thieves who sneak in among rescue workers after an airstrike, stealing anything from jewelry to kitchen utensils as families are being dug out from the rubble.
When civilians flee their homes in response to Israeli evacuation orders, thieves descend upon empty neighborhoods, sneaking into apartments and ripping out everything they can, residents say.
Anas Al-Tawashy, 32, went to the thieves’ market in Deir al-Balah after his house was robbed for the third time. He said he was trying to find his niece’s pajamas and his wife’s pots and pans — everyday items that have become ever more rare amid waves of bombardment, displacement and the Israeli blockade.
Yet what he most longed to find was the PlayStation and games that he and his twin brother, now far away in Canada, spent hours playing together as young boys.
“Those were my childhood memories,” he said, after days of fruitless searching. “I feel so much pain over this.”
Not even toilets are spared the thieving frenzy. So many have been stolen that when families return home or relocate to towns where fighting has ebbed, they are forced to buy used toilets for their lodgings. Thieves effectively created soaring demand for toilets, selling them at around $100 — triple their price before the war.
After evacuation orders came to his neighborhood in Khan Younis, Salah Al-Qedra tried to pre-empt the thieves by emptying out his home of everything he could, including the toilets. His family moved in with nearby relatives, but like so many homeowners in Gaza, he risks his own life every day by remaining in an area Israel has warned it may strike to stand guard over the remnants of his home.
Last month, Mr. Al-Qedra said he and his neighbors watched helplessly as armed gangs looted the nearby European Hospital. The crime was especially outrageous, he said, because it incapacitated one of the few hospitals still able to treat the constant flow of wounded.
“What if a thief got injured? Where will he be taken? How would he get treatment?” he asked. “This hospital served the community and displaced people for more than eight months, and that good deed was repaid by simply robbing them.”
The thieves, undeterred by onlookers filming them with their phones, dragged out loot like beds, stretchers and IV equipment, Mr. Al-Qedra said.
Hospitals are a lucrative target, just like the schools that have mostly been converted into refugee shelters, as most have large solar panels on the rooftops to power their facilities.
In today’s wartime conditions, a solar panel is not only a power supply, but a business opportunity. Savvy entrepreneurs can use solar panels to set up charging stations amid the rows of tents in displacement camps, allowing locals to charge their phones or batteries to power lighting or other electronics at night.
Even as more crimes are orchestrated, others are spontaneous attacks symptomatic of a desperate population.
Last month in Khan Younis, a man ran toward a crowd of people on a busy street, shouting: “Everyone! A truck loaded with tents is coming this way!”
With so many Gazans displaced more than once in this war, tents are invaluable.
Passers-by and street vendors sprang into action, looking for rocks and sticks to strike the truck, and blocking the road. The truck, its carriage caged in steel for protection, barreled toward the crowd at top speed, as gunmen inside opened fire, leaving behind a cloud of dust and a disappointed crowd.
But clever thieves can repurpose nearly anything for profit, like the stolen books that Mr. Al-Jabri, the poet, initially assumed were sold for people to read and pass time during the war.
Once he understood the books were being sold for kindling, Mr. Al-Jabri walked away in disgust. The vendor chased after him crying, he recalled, offering to drop the price.
“At that moment, I lost my passion for the written word,” Mr. Al-Jabri said. “The priority now is survival — to eat, not to read.”
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