Tag Archives: Businesses

J.P. Morgan Chase Bank wants to know who gives money to the Religious Freedom Committee, closes their account

Matthew 5:10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven

Important Takeaways:

  • Account Closed: Banks and Businesses Cancel Christians
  • When the National Committee for Religious Freedom, headed by former U.S. Senator and Religious Freedom Ambassador Sam Brownback, needed a bank account, they went to JPMorgan Chase. After only a few weeks they learned their account had been closed.
  • “I went in to make a deposit at a branch here in Kansas about three or four weeks after we’d opened up the account,” Brownback told us,” And the teller there said ‘That account’s been closed.’ And I go, ‘What?’ and they said, ‘That account’s been closed. Your funds will be sent to you in a couple of weeks.’ And then later they came back and said, ‘Well, if you’ll disclose who gives more than 10% of your funds to you and your criteria for supporting candidates as a 501c4 we’ll consider re-opening up the account.’
  • Wondering whether it was discrimination, The National Committee for Religious Freedom has set up a website called “Chased Away.” The group is encouraging people of faith to come forward if they’ve been denied service by a company or bank.
  • This year the Canadian government weaponized its financial system against citizens protesting COVID-19 restrictions, freezing their bank accounts.

Read the original article by clicking here.

Kentucky rain turns more tornado survivors out of their homes

By Rod Nickel

MAYFIELD, Kentucky (Reuters) – Jimmy Galbreath counted his blessings too soon. His home in Mayfield, Kentucky, was battered but not broken last week by a tornado, and the 62-year-old former scrap iron worker planned to keep living there.

Then on Thursday rain soaked the state, with another downpour forecast for Friday into Saturday afternoon. As Galbreath watched, water leaked steadily into his kitchen, finding paths opened by two trees that had smashed into his house during the tornado.

“I can’t stay in here, it’s impossible,” said Galbreath, who collects social security. He said he was looking to buy a camper to live in.

“This is going to be a long haul, it’s not going to be no easy fix,” he said of his uninhabitable house.

Rebuilding hard-hit Kentucky cities like Mayfield and Dawson Springs will take years, with entire neighborhoods and numerous workplaces wiped out by the most severe U.S. tornadoes in a decade. At least 74 people in Kentucky and 14 elsewhere died in the storms.

GAPING HOLES

Many homes, businesses and churches in Mayfield, population 10,000, already have blue tarps nailed over their gaping holes, but on other structures, roofs and glass-less windows remain open to the sky.

As the rain began, water quickly pooled in streets as debris from the tornado’s destruction clogged storm drains.

Some residents opted to stay in their damaged homes after tornadoes struck last week instead of moving in with family, or into shelters, as others did.

Nearly all hotel rooms within an hour’s drive of Mayfield are full, forcing even some out of town emergency personnel to drive a long daily commute.

Mayfield expects a further half inch (12.7 mm) of rain on Friday, with potential for heavier amounts, and showers continuing on Saturday, according to The Weather Channel.

Once the rain passes, temperatures are forecast to dip below freezing on Sunday.

David Burke, chief program officer for non-governmental organization Team Rubicon, said the weather is likely to force more Kentucky residents out of their homes.

With rain on the way, he said, Team Rubicon volunteers have accelerated the pace of fixing tarps to homes across the state and helping residents move valuables to more secure areas.

“There are a lot of homes that are a total loss, but a lot of homes that can still be repaired if they can keep the water out,” Burke said.

Some shelter beds are available. Fourteen emergency shelters are open in Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas, enough for 550 people, said American Red Cross spokesperson Jenelle Eli.

One, recently opened in a Mayfield church, was empty when the rain started on Thursday but is expected to fill once the weather turns cold, a worker on duty said.

Mark Bruce, 64, who works for farm machinery dealer John Deere in Mayfield, salvaged sheet metal from tornado debris to patch holes in his roof. As rain fell, he looked up and said he hoped it would be enough.

“We think we’re in the dry. We feel very fortunate.”

(Editing by Gareth Jones)

Factbox: What changes are companies making in response to George Floyd protests?

(Reuters) – The corporate response to a wave of protests over the treatment of African Americans has included pledges to increase diversity, donations to civil rights groups and, in some cases, changes in policies or practices long sought by critics. Here is a sampling:

Starbucks Corp said on June 12 it would allow employees to wear Black Lives Matter t-shirts and pins, rolling back restrictions on how baristas could show support for the social movement against racism.

Apple Inc said on June 11 the iPhone maker will increase spending with black-owned suppliers as part of a $100 million racial equity and justice initiative, while Google’s YouTube video service said it will spend $100 million to fund black content creators.

Walmart Inc said on June 10 it would no longer keep “multicultural hair and beauty products” in locked display cases at any of its stores. Critics had said doing so suggested consumers of those products are more likely to shoplift.

NASCAR on June 10 banned the Confederate flag at all its car racing tracks and events, saying the symbol of white segregationists “runs contrary to our commitment to providing a welcoming and inclusive environment for all fans”.

Amazon.com Inc on June 10 imposed a one-year moratorium on police use of its facial recognition product, Rekognition, which critics say is more likely to misidentify people with darker skin and more likely to be used in minority communities.

Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter Inc and Square Inc, announced on June 9 that June 19, or June teenth, would become a paid company-wide holiday every year for employees of both companies. The date commemorates the June 19, 1865 reading in Texas of President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Declaration, which brought an end to slavery in the United States.

U.S. payments group Mastercard Inc in a message to its employees on June 12 said that June 19 will be a holiday for its employees and the day would be designated as Mastercard Day of Solidarity.

L’Oreal SA on June 9 rehired Munroe Bergdorf, a British black transgender model it sacked in 2017 after she described all white people as racist. The French cosmetics company offered Bergdorf a seat on a newly formed UK diversity and inclusion advisory board, a role she accepted.

HBO said on June 9 it would pull from its HBO Max streaming service the Oscar-winning 1939 film “Gone with the Wind,” long decried for its racist depictions of blacks in the antebellum South.

The Paramount Network, owned by ViacomCBS Inc, said on June 9 it would discontinue the reality show “Cops” after 33 years on air. Critics say the show has glorified police violence.

International Business Machines Corp said on June 8 it would no longer sell or research facial recognition tools that critics contend are biased against people of color.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said on June 5 the league was “wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier,” an apparent reference to its opposition to players kneeling during the national anthem to protest police treatment of African Americans, a protest initiated by quarterback Colin Kaepernick in 2016. “We, the National Football League, believe black lives matter.”

Bank of America Corp on June 2 said it would spend $1 billion over four years to address racial and economic inequality.

(Reporting by Greg Mitchell, Uday Sampath and Anurag Maan; Editing by Dan Grebler, Shounak Dasgupta and David Gregorio)

New York’s Cuomo says businesses can turn away people not wearing masks

(Reuters) – New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said he would sign an executive order on Thursday authorizing businesses to deny entry to anyone who does not wear a mask or face covering, stressing masks were critical to preventing the spread of the novel coronavirus.

“We’re giving the store owners the right to say if you’re not wearing a mask, you can’t come in. That store owner has a right to protect themselves, that store owner has a right to protect the other patrons in that store,” Cuomo told a daily briefing.

(reporting by Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut and Maria Caspani in New York; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

California’s PG&E customers face new round of mass outages

By Steve Gorman

(Reuters) – Power supply to about 150,000 California homes and businesses is expected to be shut off on Wednesday, in the latest precautionary outage planned by utility giant PG&E against wildfire risks posed by extremely dry, windy weather.

Late on Tuesday, the company said it would go forward with the shutoffs from 9 a.m., with some customers likely to be unaffected until late afternoon.

The mass blackout will be the fourth imposed by Pacific Gas & Electric Co, a unit of PG&E Corp, since Oct. 9, when about 730,000 customers were left in the dark as a preventive measure called a “public safety power shutoff.”

A precautionary outage initiated on Oct. 23 hit an estimated 179,000 customers, while another run in phases from Oct. 26 through Nov. 1 affected a record 941,000 homes and workplaces, according to PG&E.

The latest mass shutoff is likely to run through midday Thursday and could ultimately affect 181,000 customers across portions of 16 counties in northern and central California, PG&E spokeswoman Katie Allen told Reuters.

The outages are a response to forecasts for humidity levels to drop and heavy desert winds to howl through the region, a scenario that strengthens the risk of wildfires ignited by downed power lines.

Wind gusts will reach between 35 mph and 55 miles (56 km to 89 km), with isolated areas of higher gusts, National Weather Service forecasters said.

PG&E, California’s largest investor-owned utility, filed for bankruptcy in January, citing $30 billion in civil liability from major fires sparked by its equipment in 2017 and 2018.

That tally includes the state’s deadliest fire on record, the Camp fire that killed 85 people in and around the northern town of Paradise last year.

The recent wave of precautionary shutoffs has provoked criticism from Governor Gavin Newsom, state regulators and consumer activists as being too broad.

Newsom blames PG&E for doing too little to properly maintain and secure its power lines against wind damage and has accused the utility of poorly managing some of the mass outages.

Utility executives have acknowledged room for improvement while defending the sprawling cutoffs as a matter of public safety.

The California Public Utilities Commission recently opened a formal investigation of whether PG&E and other utilities violated energy regulations by cutting power to millions of residents for days at a time during periods of high winds.

Even as northern California braced for heightened wildfire risks, parts of Southern California, including Los Angeles, were expected to be doused by their first substantial showers after months of little or no rainfall.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Culver City, Calif.; Additional reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall and Clarence Fernandez)

U.S. to send 100 agents to Mexico border to cut delays: congresswoman

FILE PHOTO: Trucks wait in a long queue for border customs control to cross into U.S., at the Cordova-Americas border crossing bridge in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico April 5, 2019. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez/File Photo

By Julio-Cesar Chavez

EL PASO, Texas (Reuters) – U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will send about 100 agents to the Mexico border to speed up crossing times, a U.S. congresswoman said on Thursday, as businesses grapple with trade delays after officers were redeployed to immigration duties.

The slowdowns began late last month after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to close the border if Mexico did not halt a surge of people seeking asylum in the United States.

The administration moved several hundred border agents to handle the influx of migrants, triggering long delays for cross-border traffic because of the staffing shortage.

As soon as Monday, CBP plans to send officers from the Canadian border and other parts of the country to El Paso, Texas, said Democratic U.S. Representative Veronica Escobar of Texas, noting she had been informed by CBP Deputy Commissioner Robert Perez.

CBP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Rio Grande Valley, on the eastern edge of the border, was being considered as another point to deploy extra officers, Escobar added.

Wait times totaling hours have hit industrial trade hard.

Losses have amounted to $800,000 a day for transportation businesses in Mexico’s Ciudad Juarez across the border from El Paso, said the head of Mexican trucking association CANACAR, Manuel Sotelo.

Data from border business association Index Juarez showed that losses from 28 exporting firms in Ciudad Juarez that utilize the crossing total $15 million over the past week.

In El Paso, several truckers said they usually did four crossings a day and were now managing only one.

Some manufacturing plants, including automotive factories that depend on constant cross-border shipments, have turned to expensive air freight to stay on schedule.

Passenger vehicles that would normally wait up to an hour and a half to cross are now facing four-hour waits.

(Reporting by Julio-Cesar Chavez in El Paso, Texas; Additional reporting by Sharay Angulo in Mexico City; Editing by Peter Cooney and Stephen Coates)

Your Money: How to get 20 percent off your tax bill

FILE PHOTO: Copies of tax regulations are seen during a markup on the "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act" on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., November 15, 2017. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein/File Photo

By Beth Pinsker

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Tax filing season for 2018 returns starts this week, and the most complicated changes brought about by the Tax Cut and Jobs Act are still barely comprehensible.

There are some 30 million filers who need to pay attention, ranging from Uber drivers to day traders to professional athletes. Anyone who files a Schedule C for profit or loss from a business might qualify for a 20 percent deduction off certain income.

The issue is so new that tax experts have not even settled on a name for it. Some refer to the changes by the number of the section of tax code that pertains, 199A.

Some prefer a more generic-but-wordy approach: “20 percent pass-through deduction.” And some go both wordy and obscure, referring to it as the “Qualified Business Income deduction.”

Mastering the ins and outs during the past year has been a marathon, with a sprint in the last two weeks when final regulations emerged from the partially shuttered Internal Revenue Service, resulting in more than 300 pages of arcane accounting language.

“It took a lot of coffee and a lot of late nights,” said Jeff Levine, a CPA and certified financial planner who heads Blueprint Wealth Alliance, based in Garden City, New York.

Levine estimates he spent 50 to 60 hours just digesting the new paperwork. He has written more than 100,000 words about the new regulations for other tax professionals.

If you do not have that kind of time to put into decoding the new tax laws, here are Levine’s responses to some key questions:

1. Do you need professional help this year?

The truth is, not even tax professionals or DIY software may get the new regulations completely right at the moment. Since the final regulations came out, many back-end algorithms still need to be tweaked. Accountants who created their own spreadsheets to do the calculations may need to make adjustments.

Levine thinks it might take years to sort through the new tax law, and there will no doubt be court cases – all for regulations set to expire in 2026.

At some point, whatever tax program you or your tax preparer use should be able to calculate the basics, but there is a bit more to it than that.

“The software only does so much. It might tell you the right number, it might be wrong. But it will not be able to think outside the box,” Levine said.

If, for instance, your software asks you: What is my depreciable property immediately after acquisition?

And you say: What are you even talking about? Then it may be best to ask for help.

2. What can you save?

A 20 percent reduction in taxes sounds worth the effort to figure out the math, right?

For those with business income that qualifies, the savings can be significant. Say you are single and have $50,000 in income to claim from a tutoring gig, after all of your expenses and other Schedule C deductions. Your taxable income after taking out half the self-employment tax and the new $12,000 standard deduction would be just over $34,000.

The new qualified business income deduction then lowers that by 20 percent – which is about $6,900. And that would slash your tax owed by just over $800.

Go up the income scale to $150,000 and your savings is more like $6,000.

But go up the income scale too far, and you hit the caps. These start at $315,000 for married couples and half that for singles. At that point, the phase-outs start and whole swaths of occupations start to get no deduction at all – zero.

3. What kind of planning do I need to do?

If you are close to any of the caps, you could benefit in big ways from holistic financial planning, Levine said. He recently worked with a young doctor in New York who was married and right at the cap. Levine helped her set up a defined benefit retirement pension plan to lower her income by $78,000. He saved her $35,000 on her taxes, and the deferred income will come back to her when she retires.

Moves like this can be complicated because deferring income into retirement accounts to save on taxes now can actually end up costing you down the road since you have to pay taxes on it when you start getting payments.

Levine said the 199A deduction has changed his strategic thinking in some cases because today’s 20 percent deduction is very enticing.

“The key point is that nothing should go without being checked,” Levine said.

 

(Editing by Lauren Young and David Gregorio)

Most big companies failing U.N. human rights test, ranking shows

A worker removes threads on a garment inside a textile factory in Ethiopia November 17, 2017. Picture taken November 17, 2017.REUTERS/Tiksa Negeri

By Umberto Bacchi

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Most big companies operating in sectors at high risk of labor abuses are failing to meet human rights standards set by the United Nations, according to an analysis of 100 major companies published on Monday.

From tackling child labor to ensuring equal treatment for women, U.N. principles require all businesses prove they are committed to human rights and treat workers fairly.

But an analysis of more than 100 major apparel, agricultural and extraction firms by the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark (CHRB), a British charity, found many had little to show for.

Sportswear giant Adidas came top with 87 out of 100 points in the ranking that used public information on practices and policies on issues such as transparency, forced labor and the living wage to rank companies.

It was followed by miners Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, while two Chinese companies – liquor maker Kweichow Moutai and fast fashion brand Heilan Home – were ranked last.

But almost two-thirds of firms scored less than 30 points, putting the overall average at 27.

“The majority are failing to make the grade,” CHRB director Margaret Wachenfeld said in a statement.

The study comes as big brands face growing pressure from regulators and consumers to ensure their global operations are not tainted by modern-day slavery, with campaigners estimating almost 25 million people worldwide are trapped in forced labor.

More than 40 percent of businesses analyzed scored zero on human rights due diligence – the practice of identifying and addressing the risk of abuses.

CONCERNING FINDINGS

“Forced and child labor, gender equality, and protecting activists are some of the most pressing issues of our time,” said John Morrison, the head of the London-based Institute of Human Rights and Business, a think tank.

“Companies need to show how they’re addressing these challenges”.

A low score did not indicate bad practices in a company but showed the company had made available little or no information on its actions to address the risk of human rights violations, CHRB said.

China’s Kweichow Moutai ranked bottom, followed by Heilan Home and U.S. energy drinks maker Monster Beverage. None of these companies replied to requests for comment.

Coffee chain Starbucks and fashion houses Prada and Hermes also ranked among the worst.

A spokesman for Starbucks said the company had zero-tolerance policies for human rights infractions and was dedicated to bringing customers coffee “sourced in the most ethically way possible”.

Hermes said respect of human rights and labor laws was deeply rooted in its core values, organization, and production chain.

Both companies questioned the ranking’s methodology, saying it did not reflect their commitment to human rights.

A spokeswoman for Prada said the company preferred not to comment.

Caroline Robinson, director of the British charity Focus on Labour Exploitation, said the report’s findings were concerning.

“Companies simply aren’t doing enough,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“If businesses are not prepared to take meaningful action … then government intervention will be needed to move corporate responsibility from option to necessity”.

CHRB called on investors to help drive change by challenging poorly performing companies to do better.

Insurance firm Aviva, Swedish bank Nordea and Dutch financial services provider APG had already pledged to use the ranking to inform future investment decisions, it said.

(Reporting by Umberto Bacchi @UmbertoBacchi, Editing by Belinda Goldsmith. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s and LGBT+ rights, human trafficking, property rights, and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)

Business leaders turn up heat on Mexican government over crime surge

FILE PHOTO: Police officers guard the entrance of the Coca-Cola FEMSA distribution plant after it closes down due to the issues of security and violence during the campaign rally of Independent presidential candidate Margarita Zavala (unseen) in Ciudad Altamirano, Guerrero state, Mexico April 3, 2018. REUTERS/Ginnette Riquelme/File Photo

By Anthony Esposito and Sharay Angulo

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexican business leaders called out the government on Monday over a recent wave of criminal activity that has terrorized large swaths of Latin America’s second-largest economy and led some prominent firms to cut back operations.

Two of Mexico’s top business groups urged the administration of President Enrique Pena Nieto and the candidates hoping to succeed him in a July 1 election to stem the violence and robberies, which they say are putting workers’ lives at risk and hurting investment.

“The high levels of violence have become the greatest obstacle to (economic) activity,” Mexico’s powerful CCE business lobby said in a statement.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed in turf wars between drug cartels and their clashes with security forces since former President Felipe Calderon sent in the military to crush the gangs soon after taking office at the end of 2006.

In recent weeks, dairy producer Grupo Lala shuttered a distribution center in the northern state of Tamaulipas and the world’s biggest Coke bottler, Coca-Cola Femsa, indefinitely shut down a 160-employee distribution center in southwestern Guerrero state.

Canada’s Pan American Silver Corp was the latest to act, saying on Monday it would reduce operations and suspend staff movements at its Dolores silver mine in the border state of Chihuahua because of recent security incidents.

Companies risk extortion, theft, attacks on their logistics chain and physical assault on their employees, according to the American Chamber of Commerce of Mexico (AmCham).

“The impact of corruption, public insecurity, an inadequate justice (system) definitely impacts the cost of investment,” while fear of crime even keeps some executives from coming to Mexico, said Luis Gerardo del Valle, AmCham Mexico’s head of tax affairs.

Train and truck freight thefts have jumped as criminals employ more sophisticated methods.

Last week, miner and infrastructure firm Grupo Mexico said seven freight train derailments between the port of Veracruz and central Mexico were due to “sabotage” and would cost the company 312 million pesos ($16 million).

Mexican industry association Canacintra estimates that small and medium-sized companies spend the equivalent of 6 percent of their income on security, double what they did a decade ago.

‘WE CAN’T KEEP WAITING’

Mexican employers’ federation Coparmex called on the government to stop waiting until the election was over.

“Time is running out for this government, as is the public’s patience. We can’t keep waiting. This is the last call,” Coparmex said in a statement.

Pena Nieto took office in December 2012 promising to get a grip on gang violence and lawlessness. After some initial progress, the situation deteriorated and killings hit their highest level on record last year.

The president’s office had no immediate response to a request for comment.

Pena Nieto is constitutionally barred from seeking re-election, and the prospects of his Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) retaining power look grim. PRI candidate Jose Antonio Meade has been running third in nearly all opinion polls.

The principal beneficiary has been leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who has built up a strong poll lead on the back of widespread disenchantment with the PRI over corruption and rising violence, as well as sluggish economic growth.

But Lopez Obrador has also faced criticism for floating a possible amnesty for criminals to restore order.

In a thinly veiled jab at Lopez Obrador, the CCE said: “While it is true that violence is not solved by violence, it is also true that crime is not ended by forgiveness or calls to Mass.”

(Reporting by Anthony Esposito and Sharay Angulo; Additional reporting by Stefanie Eschenbacher; Editing by Dave Graham and Peter Cooney)

An economy in ruins leaves Gazans with hard choices

Palestinians stand at their house in the northern Gaza Strip February 12, 2018. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) – The man who makes crisps, chocolate and vanilla snacks for Gaza had just finished explaining how his business was going through the worst economic crisis of his life when the lights went out, shutting down his factory. Again.

Wael Al-Wadiya has been running his food manufacturing business since 1985 – in a Gaza Strip that was very different from the one in which he and two million other Palestinians now live.

Back then Israeli settlers were still in Gaza, the Islamist militant group Hamas did not yet exist, and Palestinians were still two years away from the first of the uprisings against Israeli military occupation that introduced the word ‘Intifada’ to the world.

Sitting in a slowly declining industrial estate near the fortified border with Israel, the 51-year-old confectioner says that Gaza has been brought to a near-standstill by a decade of Israeli-led blockades, and internal Palestinian divisions.

“The situation is very miserable. People’s ability to buy has fallen to a minimum, therefore our businesses and businesses in Gaza are suffering as never before,” said Wadiya.

Palestinians work at Wael Al-Wadiya's snacks and chips factory, east of Gaza City February 19, 2018. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

Palestinians work at Wael Al-Wadiya’s snacks and chips factory, east of Gaza City February 19, 2018. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

He has cut production by 70 percent and wages by 30 percent. Employees who used to work each day now may work one day in three. “Unless a miracle happens, factories and companies will close down and it will be the real death of the economy,” he said.

There has long been poverty in Gaza, but with unemployment now at 43.6 percent, according to the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics, even once-wealthy merchants are defaulting on debts, causing other businesses to collapse, like dominoes.

Many in Gaza blame Israel for the hardships, accusing it of placing an economic blockade on the enclave that has drastically reduced the movement of people and goods.

But Gazans also fault their own leaders, complaining of a power struggle between Hamas, the armed group that seized military power in Gaza in 2007, and Fatah, the secular party of Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Both Hamas and Fatah levy taxes. Both run competing bureaucracies. And even electricity has become a tool of political power – until recently the blackouts that plagued Wadiya’s factory were exacerbated by Abbas cutting money for Israeli current for Gaza.

Fatah says Hamas exploits money it collects from electricity consumers for its own purposes.

Israel, which pulled its settlers and soldiers out of Gaza in 2005, says it has been forced to control access to and from the territory to stop Hamas sending out gunmen and bombers, and from smuggling in weapons or material to make them.

The Israeli military says that it carries out “constant calculated risk management” between allowing humanitarian aid through to Gazans, while contending with Hamas, which “attempts to exploit the aid intended for Gaza’s civilian residents”.

 

POVERTY AND SECURITY

A combination of war, isolation, and internal rivalries has left Gaza in its current state.

Last year Abbas cut the salaries of 60,000 government employees in Gaza by 30 per cent, leaving them with little to spend in shops and markets after paying off bank loans. The sums of bounced checks in Gaza nearly doubled from $37 million to $62 million between 2015 and 2016, and then again to $112 million in 2017, according to the Palestinian Monetary Authority.

This lack of buying power contributed to a drop in imports through the one remaining commercial crossing with Israel, with just 350 truckloads per day compared with 800 in the last quarter of 2017.

Palestinian children play as a girl held by her mother looks out of the window of house in the northern Gaza Strip February 12, 2018. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

Palestinian children play as a girl held by her mother looks out of the window of house in the northern Gaza Strip February 12, 2018. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

Some merchants took a religious initiative in December in which they offered to write off customers’ debts using the hashtag ‘Sameh Toajar’ – ‘Forgive, and Be rewarded (by God).’

It was supported by Hamas and other factions, but the scale of the debts was too great for such a small-scale remedy.

“Gaza has gone into clinical death and is in need of root solutions, real and sustainable, and not temporary or short-lived solutions,” said Maher al-Tabba, a Gaza economist.

At the other end of the economic scale from the merchants are Suhaib, Shadi and Ahmed al-Waloud, who scavenge through garbage near their home in northern Gaza searching for plastic to sell to recycling plants.

Their father was one of the Gazans who lost their jobs in Israel more than a decade ago when Israel closed the door to thousands of Palestinian workers following Hamas’s seizure of control.

“I have been used to doing this job since I was a child,” said Suhaib, 19, from Beit Lahiya. But they now earn just enough to “stay alive,” he said, because the price paid for second-hand plastic has fallen by 80 per cent. “Nowadays there is not much work. People are not throwing away a lot of plastic.”

The question that dominates Gaza is whether hard times will make Palestinians more inclined to support attacks on Israel, or less so, because they fear reprisals.

 

Ali al-Hayek, the chairman of the Palestinian Businessmen Association in Gaza, said that total collapse of the economy would lead to instability that would be in nobody’s interests.

“Gaza is living through a real humanitarian crisis,” he said. “An economic collapse will lead to a security collapse that will cause trouble for the international community and for Israel.”

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi Writing by Stephen Farrell, Editing by William Maclean)