GAZA: Shadi Khail, a scrap collector in the Gaza strip, was killed during Israeli air strikes this month, leaving his mother, wife and two children destitute.

“He said he was going to collect plastic and sell it and get diapers and milk for the boy. He was never back,” his wife, Asma, told Reuters in their three-room house in Gaza City. “He came in a coffin.”

At least 49 people were killed during a weekend of airstrikes and rocket fire that started on Aug 5, the worst outbreak of violence in more than a year in the volatile Gaza strip, where some 2.3 million people live blockaded in a narrow patch of land.

Shadi Khail’s horse, which he used to carry the scrap metal and plastic he collected and sold for about $3 a day, was killed alongside him. “He (Shadi) wished he could get me a good house as other people do. He had always told me he wanted to do so and so but there is no income,” she said.

Palestinians protest

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Palestinians employed in Israel staged a one-day strike on Sunday in protest at a decision to pay their salaries into bank accounts rather than in cash.

The new payment method was agreed between Palestinian and Israeli authorities looking for a more efficient and secure way to pay salaries, but workers fear that hidden fees and new taxes will cut into their wages.

About 200,000 Palestinians cross each day into Israel or Jewish settlements for work, earning on average more than twice as much as those employed by Palestinian state bodies and businesses.

Published in Dawn, August 22nd, 2022