Left with nothing, people in Gaza are forced to rent generators by the hour

In Gaza City, small diesel generators have become a moving lifeline for families whose neighbourhood power and water systems no longer function. Residents gather around a single machine when it arrives, carrying jerrycans of fuel while the generator’s owner starts a timer and lets each household use the engine for a few minutes to pump water up to rooftop storage tanks.

Those scenes are routine for families who returned to damaged homes in October 2025 after fleeing earlier bombardment. For many, the old electric pumps still exist but cannot run without power, so they rent time on mobile generators and pay for diesel themselves. Prices that once ranged around 80–90 shekels per hour (roughly $26–30) have at times climbed to about 100–120 shekels ($33–40) an hour, not including fuel costs.

The machines are often run by a handful of informal operators. One man moves a soot-covered generator on a horse-driven cart from house to house, stringing long cables to connect pumps and stretching services across the street. Operators say few small mobile units remain in working order, spare parts and mechanics are difficult or expensive to obtain because of the siege, and fuel and engine oil are scarce — driving up costs and forcing some operators to work 10–12 hours a day to meet demand.

As municipal systems and household appliances become unusable, residents are turning to paid alternatives for basic chores. Displaced people pay to wash clothes at commercial laundries and rely on communal machines adapted to lower electricity availability. Official assessments underline the scale of the disruption: a UN survey found 91 percent of households faced moderate-to-high water shortages in early August, and a local damage assessment reported about 107,941 of 178,632 inspected housing units — roughly 60 percent — were severely damaged, destroyed or uninhabitable. Those losses have effectively shifted routine domestic tasks into a market for hourly services, increasing financial strain on families already coping with displacement and destruction.