Lack of basic goods in Gaza - a lighter can cost SEK 300

Umm Luay Mansour, 46, and her ten family members live in a tent in the North Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City. In a nearby, even more shabby tent, she has a simple wood oven where she cooks and bakes for customers.

She lacks electricity, gas and wood and instead burns with paper, cardboard, plastic and nylon bags. The smoke irritates her eyes and lungs. But the hardest part is still getting the fire going.

Lighters are rare and expensive in war-torn Gaza.

- Every morning I stand on the street and ask everyone: "Please, my brother, do you have a lighter?". Several mock me instead of helping me, she tells DN, on the phone.

Sometimes she goes to a place where someone has started a fire, lights a piece of cardboard and brings it back. If she doesn't manage to catch fire, there will be no work that day - and no money for the family.

The shortage of lighters emerged a few months after the outbreak of war in October 2023. It has continued despite more goods being able to enter Gaza since the ceasefire began last October. This also applies to matches.

One explanation is that lighters can be classified as dual-use products, i.e. both military and civilian applications, and therefore stopped from importation. According to Israel, such restrictions apply to, among other things, gas oil, pieces of wood and iron for shelter construction and certain school tools, the UN states.

- We value lighters like gold and guard them. There could be a big fight that could lead to divorce if this fire tool goes missing in the home, says photographer Hussein Abdul Jawad, 51.

- The lighter wanders from tent to tent until it stops working from all the use.

The shortage has also created new ways of making a living. At the roadside near al-Shifa hospital, Arafat Ziyara repairs lighters in a small kiosk.

Used lighters from him cost the equivalent of between SEK 100 and 300. The ignition mechanism alone costs SEK 85. Before the war, you could buy a lighter for a crown.

He sometimes buys broken lighters, takes parts from them and uses them to fix others. He says people are amazed when he mentions the prices.

- But the shortage gave me a job. Not in my wildest imagination did I think I would become a lighter repairman, he says with a smile.

Mansour's husband and children are also involved, picking cartons from the streets and garbage dumps for the oven. She misses life before the war, where "everything was available in the kitchen".

- I only had to press a button on the gas stove, and it worked. I shopped for the whole week. Now I'm ashamed when I beg for a lighter, she says.