Gaza City — Rabab Deifallah sits inside her tent, clutching a small, battered lighter. She presses it once, then again, trying to produce a spark strong enough to ignite a pile of wood inside a stove. The mother of five has carefully looked after the lighter.
Her son has repaired it several times since it became difficult to buy a new one after Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza began in October 2023. Firewood has become essential for 46-year-old Rabab. She uses it to bake bread, heat water for her children, prepare food and make tea amid shortages of cooking gas and soaring fuel prices.
Today, a new lighter can cost between $27-33 and Rabab last spent $12 to repair her old lighter. Palestinians in Gaza would rather spend their limited money on food, so a single lighter is often passed around families in several tents. Some days, Rabab cannot find a lighter at all, so her family has been forced to spend days eating cold food or waiting until a neighbour has a fire burning to borrow a spark.
She often sends a piece of cardboard to a neighbour to get a light off their fire and bring it home. Other times, if a neighbour is baking bread, she may ask to use their oven to prepare food for her family. The lighter is now something she guards carefully, as it is, for her, the starting point for fire, food, bread and hot water.
Nearby, Hasnaa Mansour, 43, faces the same problem but from a different angle. Displaced from Jabalia refugee camp, Hasnaa sits beside a clay oven she had treasured since her family’s financial situation deteriorated during the war. Her husband previously worked as a tailor and the family lived relatively comfortably, but due to a lack of business, Hasnaa now bakes and sells food to help support their six children.
Hasnaa has repeatedly repaired her lighter because buying a new one is beyond her means. But a shortage of cooking gas has made the problem even worse. But with the oven, I need a real fire,” she said.
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