GAZA CITY — Using two fingers, 24-year-old Abdel Salam al-Arabi shapes a lump of clay as it rotates on an electric pottery wheel, transforming the solid mass into a vase or pot within minutes. He then dips his fingers in water to soften the sides of the emerging vessel and mold the shiny soft clay before leaving it to dry.

“Pottery relies on the rotation of the wheel and the movement of the fingers. I can form whatever I want with a mass of clay. I am now making a bird’s nest,” Arabi told Al-Monitor.

Arabi, who works with his father in a pottery shop on al-Nafaq Street in Gaza City, said that there had been five pottery shops on his street five years ago, but now theirs is the only one left. Even then, they are struggling to survive.

“Around 10 years ago, we had a small family factory in al-Faluja, in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, where my grandfather and father used to work. After the region became an urban residential area, and everyone started using plastic utensils and glassware, people lost interest in pottery. Our losses outweighed our profits, so we closed the shop,” Arabi recalls.