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Bloomberg Businessweek August 19, 2019Mohamadal-Assarwasasleepwhenhisfactorywasbombed.
Ona steamynightinAugust2014,hewasawakenednotbythe
explosionbutbya phonecallfromthesecurityguardatthe
plant.Theconcrete-mixingfactory, 2 milesnorthofhishome
andadjacenttotheonlyhighwayintheGazaStrip,hadbeen
attackedinthefinaldaysoftheseven-weekwarbetweenIsrael
andIslamistmilitants.Whenal-Assargotthereatdawn,hesaw
nothingbutdevastation.Twoneighborsweredead.Theoffices
hadbeenreducedtorubble.Thestoragesiloswereheapsof
metal.An18-wheelconcrete-pumpingtruckhadbeenthrown
acrosstheroad.“Ijustsatintheruinsandcried,”al-Assarsays,
scrollingthroughphotosofthedestructiononhisphone.
Heknewhehadtoopenagain;theplantprovideda liv-
ingforal-Assarandhis 40 workers.Butbuildinganykind
offactoryrequirestonsofcement.Inal-Assar’scase,about
100 tons.Problemis,salesofcementarestrictlyregulated
inGaza,andal-Assarhadlittletime.Buyingcementlegally
wouldhaverequireddetailedplansandmyriadapprovals,andhehadcustomerswhoneededtorebuild.SoinJanuary
2015 hedidwhatalmosteveryoneinGazahasgottenaccus-
tomedtoafterdecadesofIsraelioccupationandblockade:
Hewenttotheblackmarket.Hepaidaboutdoublethegoing
rateofjustover$100perton,buthemanagedtorestart
productionbythatMarch.“Ineededtogetthingsmoving,”
hesaysinthefactory’scrowdedcontrolroom,wherean
ancientcomputermonitorsthecombinationofingredients
tomakeconcrete.
Gazaneedsconcrete,andlotsofit.Inthe 2014 war,some
11,000housingunitsweredestroyed,andanadditional
160,000sustainedsomedamage,accordingtothe Gaza
ChamberofCommerce—affectingmorethana quarterof
thefamiliesintheterritory.Today,fiveyearsafterthefight-
ingended,some16,500people remain in temporary hous-
ing, according to the United Nations. Gaza’s streets are lined
with half-built structures, where a handful of floors are occu-
pied but the rest are windowless shells. Older buildings are
pockmarked and crumbling from decades of neglect or dam-
age in various conflicts. It’s common to see groups of men
clambering over piles of debris, breaking up slabs of concretetorecyclewhattheycan.Torepairwardamage,carryout
normalupkeep,andbuildplannedprojectsoverthepastfive
years,Gazaneededatleast 6 million tons of cement, the cham-
ber says. It’s gotten less than half that.Like just about everything having to do with Palestinian-
Israeli relations, supplying cement to Gaza is intensely polit-
ical. The market is dominated by Nesher Israel Cement
Enterprises, which gets about a third of its revenue from con-
tractors who build homes for Jewish settlers on occupied land
in the West Bank and controls almost three-fourths of legal sales
in Gaza. Deliveries are governed by the Gaza Reconstruction
Mechanism, or GRM, the complex set of rules al-Assar faced.
Thatsystemmonitorsso-calleddual-usematerials—things
neededbyciviliansthatalsohavepotentialmilitaryapplica-
tions.Israelrestrictsshipmentsofmorethan 100 broad cat-
egories of goods, ranging from smoke detectors and glues to
precast concrete sewage conduits and iron reinforcement bars.
Thebiggestandmostcontentiouscommodityis cement,
somethingthat’srarely,if ever,beenconsidereda dual-use
material. It’s easy to confuse it and concrete. The former is
the builder’s equivalent of glue, the stuff that binds the sand
and gravel that make up the bulk of concrete, which is used in
just about every structure in the industrialized world. Making
cement isn’t complicated—the recipe hasn’t changed appre-
ciably in two centuries—but it requires vast amounts of energy
and facilities the size of a small city. Ideally, a cement factory
will be located adjacent to a limestone quarry. The limestone
is crushed, combined with clay and small amounts of addi-
tives such as ash or iron ore, and heated to 1,500C (2,700F).
What comes out the other end is called clinker—a dark, rocky
substance that looks something like charcoal briquettes. The
clinker is mixed with a bit of gypsum or limestone and ground
into a powder that becomes cement.
The driving force behind the GRM was a Dutch diplomat
named Robert Serry, who was the UN’s chief peace negotia-
tor in the region. In September 2014, just a few weeks after
the fighting ended, Serry met with Israelis and Palestinians in
the West Bank to broker an agreement to speed reconstruc-
tion. With international donors expected to pledge more than
$5 billion in aid at a conference in Cairo that October, someone
needed to monitor shipments of supplies to building sites. “It
would have made no sense without some sort of mechanism
to get goods into Gaza,” Serry recalls. “Everybody started to
look to the UN for a solution.”
What many in Gaza still call “the Serry Plan” faced intense
skepticism. Israeli military brass were especially concerned
about keeping Hamas—the Islamist group that rules Gaza,
deemed by the U.S., the European Union, and Israel to be a
terrorist organization—from getting its hands on materials that
could be used to build tunnels for sneaking into Israel. But by
late September, the two sides came to an agreement. While the
GRM has seen millions of tons of cement enter Gaza from Israel
in the past five years, many Gazans say the plan slowed recon-
struction and helped ignite a black market for goods smuggledAl-Assar’s destroyed factory in 2014COURTESY MOHAMMED AL ASSAR