The Economy of Survival: Life Inside Gaza~ 5 min

By Abdallah Qudaih

Before the war, I believed that right and wrong were clear.

‏A fair price was a fair price.
‏Helping someone in need was natural.
‏Exploiting another person’s suffering was shameful.

‏War does not only destroy buildings.
‏It rearranges the moral architecture of a society.

‏Today, in Gaza, we do not live inside a functioning market.
‏We live inside an economy of survival.

‏And survival distorts everything.

‏During the first waves of displacement, I saw something that felt like betrayal.

‏When evacuation orders came, thousands of families tried to flee with whatever they could carry. Mattresses tied with rope. Plastic bags filled with clothes. Documents pressed against chests. Children clinging to blankets.

‏Truck and bus owners raised transportation prices to several times their normal rates. Some families could not afford it. Instead, they walked kilometres under the sun, under drones, under fear.

‏We were among them.

‏At first, it felt simple: exploitation.

‏But war teaches you to look deeper.

‏Fuel prices had already multiplied.
‏Supply lines had collapsed.
‏Spare parts were scarce.
‏If a vehicle broke down, repairs could cost a fortune, assuming parts were even available.
Bombardments made every trip a risk.

‏And so, prices rose.

‏But why were spare parts so expensive?
‏Why had fuel become so scarce?
‏Why had repair costs become unbearable?

‏The answer did not begin with the driver.

‏It began with the blockade.
‏With the destruction of infrastructure.
‏With control over crossings.
‏With the deliberate suffocation of supply chains.

‏In an economy of survival, exploitation is rarely isolated.
‏It spreads through a chain of fear.

‏One trader raises prices because supplies are uncertain.‏
Another hoards goods because tomorrow may bring nothing.
‏A family spends everything just to survive the week.
‏Later, when they receive an aid parcel, cleaning supplies, canned food, anything of value, they resell part of it at inflated prices to recover their losses and buy what they actually need.

‏This behaviour increases suffering.
‏But it is not always born from greed.

‏It is born from fear.

‏Fear of running out.
‏Fear of being the next one without options.
‏Fear of collapse.

‏This is how survival reshapes morality.

‏But fear alone does not explain everything.

‏There are those who exploit systematically.

‏Some traders have stored essential goods during shortages and released them only when crossings closed, selling at prices that drained entire savings.

‏Some intermediaries and self-proclaimed “initiatives” have received donations meant for the displaced and turned them into opportunities for profit, photographing aid packages for social media while selling portions of those same goods back to the very people they were supposed to support.

‏There are institutions that claim to serve the vulnerable while operating without transparency. There are individuals who have learned that chaos creates opportunity.

‏War does not create injustice from nothing.
‏It amplifies what already exists.

‏And when oversight collapses, the line between need and profit becomes blurred.

‏The occupation does not need to micromanage every transaction.
‏It only needs to create the conditions where trust erodes, resources shrink, and fear governs decision-making.

‏When communities begin competing for survival instead of cooperating for stability, fragmentation accelerates.

‏This, too, serves destruction.

‏And yet, this is not the whole story.

‏Because within the same camps, under the same drones, something else persists.

‏When heavy rain collapses a tent, neighbours gather without discussion. Rope appears. Extra fabric appears. Hands lift metal poles back into place. Someone brings tea. Someone comforts the children.

‏When water trucks arrive, four days a week, buckets are shared. If an elderly man cannot walk the hundred meters to carry water, someone else carries it for him.

‏When electricity does not exist and phones must be charged at paid stations, sometimes someone gives someone else a few minutes of battery to send a message: “We are still alive.”

‏I have seen arguments break out among families crammed into tight spaces, tension fuelled by exhaustion and heat. I have also seen those same families reconcile hours later, because survival leaves no room for permanent division.

‏This is the contradiction of the economy of survival.

‏The same pressure that produces exploitation also produces solidarity.

‏The same scarcity that fuels hoarding also fuels sharing.

‏War compresses human behaviour to its extremes.

‏Some harden.
‏Some fracture.
‏Some rise.

‏Most simply struggle to remain human under conditions designed to strip humanity away.

‏The outside world often wants simple narratives: heroes or villains, saints or opportunists.

‏Reality is harder.

‏A man who overcharges for transport may be terrified of losing his only vehicle, his family’s sole source of income.

‏A family that resells part of an aid parcel may be trying to buy vegetables, because their children cannot survive on canned goods alone.

‏And yet, a trader who hoards fuel in anticipation of higher profits cannot be separated from the system that rewards scarcity.

‏The moral landscape becomes layered.

‏What I have learned is this:

‏In an economy of survival, prices are not just economic signals.
‏They are psychological indicators of fear.

‏The higher the fear, the higher the price.

‏And fear, under prolonged violence, becomes a governing force.

‏But so does dignity.

‏Even here under tents, under blockade, under constant surveillance from the sky, people still choose daily whether they will contribute to fragmentation or to resilience.

‏Genocide does not only aim at physical destruction.
‏It aims to erode the internal bonds of a society.

‏Yet those bonds have not disappeared.

‏They are strained.
‏They are tested.
‏They are uneven.

‏But they endure.

‏The economy of survival is not clean.
‏It is not romantic.
‏It is not morally simple.

‏It is a daily negotiation between fear and conscience.

‏And every day, in small invisible decisions, in a shared bucket of water, in a raised price, in a rebuilt tent, a community continues to define what remains of itself.

‏Abdallah Qudaih

Abdallah Qudaih is a 17-year-old Palestinian writer. Last December, as a way to help support his family, he published his first book: Beneath the Rubble, an overwhelming account of his experience during the ongoing genocide. Buy it here.