In Gaza, a Lighter That Once Cost Under $1 Now Sells for $50 Under Israeli Blockade

Hanaa Abu Samra keeps her family's lighter inside a plastic box, careful never to leave it outside her tent. In the displacement camp west of Gaza City where she has lived since fleeing the north, it is one of the few possessions she guards as closely as food.

"The lighter has become more important than we ever imagined," Abu Samra, 41, told The New Arab. "When we want to light a firewood fire or cook food, we look for it first. If a neighbour has one, we wait until they finish using it."

Before Israel's war on Gaza began in October 2023, a lighter sold for less than a dollar at any corner grocery. Palestinians did not think twice about losing one. Now, according to market observation described in the reporting, some lighters sell for as much as $50, a price shift that vendors and displaced residents attribute to the collapse of ordinary commerce under the blockade.

Cooking gas is scarce and electricity sporadic across the territory, according to the reporting, forcing families to rely on firewood for cooking and heating water. That has made an ignition source, however small, into daily necessity rather than convenience.

"We never imagined we would reach a point where we would have to borrow a lighter from our neighbors," said Samer al-Najjar, 36, standing before a market vendor with a lighter he can no longer afford to replace.

Al-Najjar, interviewed in a market in central Gaza City, said he is trying to repair his old lighter rather than buy a new one because of the cost. He said borrowing and exchanging lighters between families has become common, particularly in displacement camps where large numbers live in close quarters.

A trade born of scarcity

The shortage has created new, unlikely work. Iyad al-Shawa, 39, once repaired household appliances before the war shuttered much of Gaza's economy. He now sits in a corner of a Gaza City market with a box of dozens of broken lighters and basic tools, dismantling some for spare flints and parts to fix others.

"Before, no one would come to me to repair a lighter," al-Shawa told The New Arab. "People would just buy a new one and be done with it. Now, people keep every old lighter they can find and try to fix it."

He said customers sometimes bring in lighters years old, unable to afford a replacement, asking him to make them work "somehow."

The lighter shortage is one small marker of a wider collapse. Israel's offensive, launched after the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack, has produced Palestinian casualty tolls in the tens of thousands, figures that are widely cited though not independently verified in this reporting and that Israel disputes. Displacement in Gaza has been described by residents and aid groups as affecting the overwhelming majority of the population, many now living in tents without reliable access to fuel, water or electricity.

What used to be disposable, Abu Samra said, is now something her family cannot easily replace. "If we lose one, we feel like we've lost something we can't easily replace," she said.