After being allowed to market its products in the West Bank markets for the first time in 14 years, the "Saray Al-Wadi" company - based in the Gaza Strip - is looking forward to restoring the production capacity it had before the imposition of the siege on the coastal strip in mid-2007.

The "Saray Al-Wadi" company is the first among Gaza companies to allow Israel to reach some of its food products to the West Bank.

An important step

The general manager of the company, Wael Al-Wadi, told Al-Jazeera Net that this permission does not mean that the Israeli restrictions have been removed from the movement of marketing in the West Bank and exportation abroad, "but it is an important step, and we are looking forward to more facilities."

Since last November 22 - until the moment - Israel has allowed 4 shipments that include only two items (chips and local sweets known as winter) out of 50 items produced by the company to reach the West Bank markets through the Kerem Shalom commercial crossing, which is the only one designated for the passage of goods and goods to and from The besieged sector.

According to Al-Wadi, the company was distributing between 60 and 70% of its total food products in the West Bank, before Israel imposed its tight blockade, following the takeover of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) on Gaza in June 2007.

Al-Wadi said that the factory has been operating at less than half of its production capacity since then, due to Israel's ban on marketing in the West Bank and exporting abroad, and he hopes that the production capacity of the factory - which was established in 1985, has obtained the international certificate of "ISO 22000" (ISO 22000) for the quality of specifications. Food - to 90% in the event that all items are allowed to be marketed in the West Bank, whose markets are many times larger than their counterpart in Gaza, in terms of area, population density and purchasing power.

He added, "Our products reached Europe and Gulf countries before they reached the West Bank, which is a few kilometers away from us, and had it not been for the quality standard specifications, Israel would not have responded to European pressures it was subjected to, and that led to allowing it to be marketed in the West Bank."

The residents of the Gaza Strip suffer from several crises that have caused high rates of unemployment and poverty (Anatolia)

Currently, there are 150 employees and workers employed in the "Sarayo al-Wadi" company, after it was forced into the past years, and by the restrictions of the blockade;

To reduce the number of employees, and the general manager of the company expects that the number will more than double if all the factory products are allowed to be marketed outside Gaza.

The Executive Director of the General Federation of Palestinian Industries, Khader Shniora, said that allowing Gaza factories to market in the West Bank was a "great achievement" after "the lean years of the siege."

Shniora assured Al-Jazeera Net that Gaza products are able to compete not only in the West Bank market, but also in international markets, and this has been proven with the success of 5 factories - one of which is "Saray Al-Wadi" - in obtaining the highest international quality certificate, and soon 5 other factories will obtain the same certificate. .

Shniora recalled the years before the Israeli blockade, in which many food and industrial products succeeded in competing in the West Bank markets, inside Israel and abroad, most notably food products such as flour, sweets, biscuits, and canned goods of all kinds, clothes and furniture.

Although Shniora describes this as a great achievement, at the same time he confirms that industries in Gaza in all its sectors face great challenges due to Israeli restrictions and obstacles, which incurred heavy financial losses over the past years, and caused the collapse of many companies and factories, and some of them stopped working. And others emigrated to work in Arab countries.

Positive reflections

For his part, the editor-in-chief of the Gaza-based Al-Eqtisadiah newspaper, Muhammad Abu Jayab, told Al-Jazeera Net that allowing Gaza's products to reach the West Bank would restore the wheel of production to rotation again, after years of siege in which production capacity fell to less than 20%.

This development has several positive repercussions on the "faltering" Gaza economy, the most prominent of which is - according to Abu Jayab - that it provides thousands of job opportunities, in light of a crisis of poverty and stifling unemployment, and contributes to pushing the economic indicators towards growth, after many years in which the economy in the small coastal sector was subjected to vibrations Violent as a result of the Israeli blockade and punitive measures by the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah.

According to the monitoring and documentation of civil institutions, 800 industrial establishments in various sectors continued to operate at low capacity, and resisted collapse, out of two thousand establishments that were operating in Gaza before the imposition of the blockade.

Abu Jayab expected that more facilities would have an important role in preserving investors and businessmen, whose harsh conditions pushed some of them to emigrate, and would restore the required strength to industrial sectors, thus reducing dependence on foreign imports, which reached 95% in all products, including Food and clothing that was characteristic of Gaza.

Abu Jayab links the return of the spirit to the Gaza economy to real facilities for the movement of import and export, especially with regard to raw materials, which Israel forbids supplying many of them, in addition to increasing the types of goods and products allowed to be marketed in the West Bank or exported abroad.

About two million people in the Gaza Strip (360 square kilometers) suffer from several crises, which have caused an increase in the unemployment rate to 46%, and the poverty rate to 53%, according to the latest official statistics.