With the advent of spring .. Corona threw Gaza flowers food for livestock

PioneerMoses - Gaza

"In the time of Corona, roses became food for livestock or dumped in the landfill." .. With these few words, with great sadness, the twenty-year-old farmer of Lapad Hijazi expressed his condition and that of the roses farmers in Gaza, who suffer heavy losses due to the emergency imposed by the pandemic of the Corona virus. 

Hegazy said to Al-Jazeera Net, "We were supposed to be farmers as mentioned at the top of our preoccupation at a time like this, in conjunction with the arrival of the spring season, in which there are many joys and different occasions in which the demand for roses increases." 

But the wheel of life stopped in the coastal sector - besieged for 14 years - due to the Corona virus crisis, which prompted the authorities in Gaza to take precautionary measures, which included closing wedding halls, educational institutions, sports clubs and mosques indefinitely, while finally decided to reopen restaurants.

Hejazi, whose family owns the largest flower farm in the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, said, "We are tired of the wind, and we have lost the season in which the flowers bloom and the people and official and private institutions are increasingly buying it to celebrate their joys and special and public occasions." 

He added that "due to the fallout from Corona, rose has no place in the market, and its demand has decreased to its lowest levels and is almost non-existent, and it is sold at low prices, until we now throw large quantities of roses as food for livestock." 

Hijazi hopes that the crisis will not last, and that the flower trade will flourish again so that their losses do not double, so that, for the moment, his family incurred financial losses estimated at more than 150,000 shekels (about $ 43,000). 

25 members of the Hijazi family, in addition to six workers with their families, live from the 10-donum (10,000 square meters) rose farm, which is one of the few farms that has remained steadfast among the 500 farms that were spread until 2012 in the city of Rafah on the borders of the Strip South with Egypt. 

Will the flowers hold up?
Hejazi says that their farm has held up despite the occupation authorities' banning the export of Gaza roses abroad eight years ago, thanks to his father's insistence and his adherence to the rose cultivation that he started in 1991. 

But the majority of farmers were forced to switch to other crops, due to the Israeli blockade and the financial support that the Netherlands was providing to the flower growers in Gaza. 

Hegazy is now not sure of his father’s ability to withstand it for a long time, especially if the SK crisis is prolonged and local marketing stops. 

It is believed that the Ministry of Agriculture and private agricultural institutions have a great responsibility towards rose farmers specifically, if this agriculture is to continue in Gaza, by exempting farmers from taxes and fees, and supporting them with seedlings and fertilizer. 

Economic journalist writer Hamid Gad told Al-Jazeera Net that flower farming in Gaza was prosperous, and hundreds of farmers, merchants and workers live from work with it, and about 60 million flowers are exported annually. But with the Israeli blockade, the closure of crossings, and high production costs, this sector has declined dramatically. 

The Corona crisis came to cast heavy and negative shadows on all economic activities, and the flower sector is among the sectors worst affected by the crisis, as the flower producer has become unable to market them locally, while Israel continues to prevent exports to abroad, according to Gad. 

The Gaza Strip knew of flower cultivation for commercial purposes in 1991, and its peak activity and expansion reached in 1998, with more than 100 projects with an area of ​​1200 acres.

But flower cultivation began to decline with the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000, and it took a severe blow with Israel banning exports in 2012, bringing the cultivated area down to only about 6% of the total area.