Gazans refer to their overcrowded enclave without too much exaggeration as “the world’s largest prison yard.”
December 18, 2007 1:22 pm Gaza under Hamas
Ammar Yazji stands in front of empty Pepsi and 7-Up bottles in his factory in Gaza.
David Blumenfeld for TIME
Tim McGirk, Soft Drink Fizz Goes Flat in Gaza - TIME, December 13, 2007
Every closed factory has its own kind of unbearable silence. The Yazegi Group’s soft-drink plant in Gaza, with its maze of metal tubes and conveyor belts all switched off, has the hush of a futuristic mausoleum. Marketing manager Ammar Yazegi pauses beside empty 7Up bottles stacked in perfect emerald-green cubes up to the rafters and says, “I miss the music of the machines and workers. It’s a beautiful noise. This silence drives me crazy.”
His family misses another sound: the ka-ching! of money. For years the Yazegi Group had a captive market of 1.48 million Palestinians living in the narrow coastal strip of Gaza. Captive, unfortunately, is the right word because the Israelis, who are contending daily with rocket-firing Palestinian militants, have destroyed the airport and harbor and keep Gaza’s inhabitants behind a concrete-and-barbed-wire fence that is 25 miles (40 km) long. Gaza has one entry and exit point, which the Israelis strictly control. Gazans refer to their overcrowded enclave without too much exaggeration as “the world’s largest prison yard.”