Inside the ‘displacement economy’ Gazans built to survive the genocide

In Gaza's displacement camps, survival has bred a new economy: a gym owner forges weights from empty cans, a supermarket owner turns baker, a housewife becomes a street vendor — each person rebuilding a livelihood from the wreckage of genocide. Palestinian fitness trainer Iman al-Mughir uses empty food cans and other waste items as part of her makeshift gym in Mawasi, Khan Younis, 11 August 2026

Tareq S. Hajjaj reports in Mondoweiss on 17 August 2026:

Iman Mughira had spent months and up to $250,000 building a gym in Rafah with several partners before Israel destroyed it during the genocide. Displaced to al-Mawasi in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, she tracked satellite images of her city until she was certain the gym was gone.

“When I realized it had been destroyed, I felt that my future had also been destroyed,” Mughira, 33, told Mondoweiss.

Mughira is one of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza who lost their livelihoods to what a UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) report has called the “most severe economic crisis on record” in Gaza, erasing 22 years of development progress in less than two years.” Cut off from what they built before the genocide, many displaced Palestinians in the Strip have improvised new trades and businesses from what has been left behind, trying to continue what they once built in entirely different forms.

“When I was displaced, I left behind my life’s dream, something I had spent years building, and came to al-Mawasi, where there is neither safety nor stability,” Mughira told Mondoweiss. After fleeing Rafah for al-Mawasi, Mughira says that her biggest concern was what would become of her business. She had followed news from her city through satellite imagery, trying to determine what had happened to it, until one day, she received confirmation that it had been completely wiped out by the Israeli army, much like the rest of Rafah.

A displaced Palestinian family prepares and bakes traditional Eid cakes in a makeshift clay oven at a shelter center in Khan Younis, 26 May 2026

After the initial shock of losing her business, Mughira began looking for a way out of the grief that had overtaken her. She noticed what was piling up around every tent in the camp: empty cans from food aid and discarded cooking-oil containers.

“These materials are available in every tent, because every tent receives aid and then throws the empty cans into the garbage,” Mughira said. “That is when I had the idea of using these cans again for something new and positive for displaced people.   We filled them with sand and used pieces of wood as makeshift bars and lifted the cans, which became weights,” she explained.

Mughira began sharing her experience on social media, receiving messages from women in the camps telling her that they had carved out an hour to themselves each day to exercise and move their bodies again, without having to travel anywhere or pay money they didn’t have.

Other women told her that the exercises had helped them regain their fitness and flexibility, making it easier to cope with the physical demands of displacement, such as carrying water, hauling belongings by hand, sleeping on the sand, and washing clothes.

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