Mahmoud Al Daoudi never imagined that the radios gathering dust in his shop would sell so quickly, but in the war-torn Gaza Strip they have become a rare channel of information for the population.
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While power outages were part of daily life for Gaza's 2.4 million Palestinians, they have become a blackout since Israel cut off electricity and fuel supplies.
The territory is under complete siege by Israel after the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which is in power in Gaza, carried out a bloody attack on Israeli soil on October 7, according to an AFP count based on the latest official Israeli figures around 1,140 people died, figures released.
It is impossible to connect televisions and computers, charge phones or surf the Internet unless you have generators or solar panels, a luxury few Gazans can afford in the region relentlessly bombarded by the army. Israeli.
To follow the news, there is still the battery-operated radio.
“We had a full supply, but since the first week of the war it was completely empty,” says Mahmoud Al Daoudi, 33.
“The radio is the only way to know what is happening due to internet and communications outages” and “the batteries last a long time,” he says in his shop in Rafah, at the southern end of the territory.
Before the war, which the Hamas government said left nearly 21,000 dead in Gaza, a radio cost about 25 shekels ($9), but since then the price has risen to 60 shekels ($22).
“We even resold the radios that we sold defective and that were returned to us,” he says.
Then, as radios disappeared from store shelves, customers began asking for old phones that could receive radio and had a small built-in flashlight, crucial when night fell.
“And now we are running out of phones!” Mahmoud Al Daoudi told AFP.
regression
And it is impossible to order new equipment while humanitarian aid is being delivered to the area in small quantities.
“People want to follow the news, know where the (Israeli) bombings are taking place, find out about the fate of their families,” explains Hussein Abou Hashem, who also no longer has radios for sale in his shop.
According to the United Nations, 1.9 million Palestinians, or 85% of the population, have been displaced since the war began. Many of them live in the south of the territory, crammed into makeshift camps where they lack everything.
“I don’t know what’s happening around us, where the attacks are taking place, which houses are being attacked, who’s still alive, who the martyrs are,” says Oum Ibrahim from the southern city of Khan Younes: “We want to get news.” everywhere in Gaza.
“When I run out of batteries, I walk around the warehouse and listen to other people’s radios,” he says.
Broadcasters such as the BBC in Arabic and Al-Jazeera have set up dedicated frequencies for displaced people to keep them updated on the latest news.
Mohammed Hassouna, 75, speaks Hebrew and listens to Israeli radio: “It allows me to receive news from the Israeli side” and “I inform my children and my neighbors.”
Outside his tent, 37-year-old Salah Zorob spends his time changing the radio station on his cell phone.
“The world is moving forward with high technology and we in Gaza are going backwards,” he laments. We will transport ourselves back to the Stone Age.