GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — The Palestinian government has allowed the entry of some Israeli products into Gaza, after having banned them for years in compliance with the 2013 Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) policy. The move resulted from the inability of factories to meet the needs of the market, as most of them were destroyed during the 2014 war on Gaza.

Hatem Oweida, undersecretary of the Ministry of National Economy, told Al-Monitor, “We have confronted two dilemmas since the last Israeli war. The first is that some producers are facing hardships in resuming production because their facilities were destroyed. Second, the domestically produced goods alone are not enough to meet the needs of the market. Therefore we opened the door to the import of some Israeli goods.”

He added, “This is a decision for a limited period to alleviate the situation. We did not take this step to make money from importation fees, as has been said, because the goods we allowed to enter do not necessitate large fees. However, we continue to ban some goods that have domestic alternatives. After a short period, we will reinstate a policy in line with conditions.”

The Israeli war has cost the industrial sector an estimated $200 million, including the destruction of some 860 business enterprises, the Palestinian Federation of Industries (PFI) informed Al-Monitor. For example, the Palestine Food Industries Company, a major local juice producer, stopped operations after its only factory was bombed and bulldozed during the Israeli ground invasion. The administrative departments and a permanent exhibition hall for marketing in the al-Basha Tower were also destroyed.