Monetary Fund described Gaza’s economy as being on the verge of collapse, with unemployment nearing 45 per cent, GDP down 15 per cent in 2014 and the once-strong manufacturing sector dying.
Of the 1.8 million people that live in Gaza — a population growing by 50,000 a year — nearly two-thirds are dependent on aid in some form or another. It is the United Nation’s longest-running relief operation, set up in 1949.
The head of those operations, Robert Turner, will leave his post next month after three years in Gaza. Since the war, he has been witheringly critical of the obstacles to reconstruction. But ahead of his departure, he tried to sound a positive note.
“I refuse to yield to pessimism,” he said. “Gaza is a place where the human spirit has shown its indomitability time and time again.” To many Gazans, that is part of the problem.
So adept have they become at getting by — finding a way to deal with up to 16 hours of power cuts a day, smuggling in everything from live animals to cars via tunnels, scraping together an existence amid militant rule and war — that people begin to regard the extraordinary as normal.
“Outsiders think ‘Well, if they’re managing to get by, maybe it’s not so bad’,” said one lifelong Gaza resident.
Sitting on the terrace of Roots, where young men and women, many not wearing Islamic headdress, were comfortably chatting and smoking together, it is easy to forget that Gaza has been run by the Islamist movement Hamas since 2007.
At night, after iftar, masked Hamas fighters, many of them bearing arms, walked through the streets of Gaza in a military-style parade, urging young men to sign up to the movement.
Rather than clamping down on the freedom on show at Roots and other beachfront hotels, Hamas’s priority is to retain power and deliver something to those battling to make ends meet.
In recent weeks it appears to have made some progress. After more than a year of keeping its border with Gaza mostly closed, Egypt has in recent days opened the crossing at Rafah to allow people and goods to move in both directions.
There is talk of Hamas offering Israel a long-term truce, which would free up the flow of goods and people across their shared border. In recent weeks, up to 2,000 Gazans a day have been crossing, a marked increase from a trickle months ago.
Qatar, a major financial supporter of Hamas, has nearly completed the construction of a new road along the beachfront and has other projects in the pipeline. Yet there are threats.
Militant Salafist groups claiming ties to Daesh have started to agitate in Gaza, firing occasional rockets into Israeli-claimed territory and carrying out attacks. They have threatened to overthrow Hamas and the rival Fatah party. As well as a threat to Palestinian authority, they are of deep concern to Egypt and Israel.
While Hamas may turn a blind eye to the small liberties taking place at Roots and elsewhere during Ramazan, Daesh and its sympathisers are unlikely to be anywhere near as accommodating.