There are more than a hundred small flowers farms across the Gaza Strip, and they employ some 7,000 farm workers between them.

The majority of farms are located around Beit Lahia in northern Gaza, but Hassan Hijazi and his family live just outside Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, where they have a small flower farm of 24 donums (a donum is around 1,000 square meters). They grow carnations and chrysanthemums. After more then seventeen years as a commercial flower farmer, Hassan Hijazi is now head of the local Rafah Flower Farmers Union.

"Ten years ago farmers across Gaza were exporting 80 million flowers a year to Europe, including roses," he says. "But the last few years have been extremely difficult, and this one has been the worst yet. I exported exactly [only] 20,000 flowers this year due to the closure. I have lost more than one million shekels, but so has every flower farmer in Gaza. We are all just losing money now."

The average annual turnover of Gaza's commercial flower industry is $13 million

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