Gaza Freelancers Resume Remote Work in Coworking Spaces

In Gaza City, freelancers navigate bombed-out streets to reach coworking spaces, where they code and design for international clients amid ongoing challenges from a war that devastated the territory. Seven months after a ceasefire took hold in October, remote work is providing vital income for many, even as reconstruction stalls.

Tarik Zaeem, a 44-year-old programmer, exemplifies the trend. Each weekday, he walks to a shared workspace to debug a barcode reader for a Saudi valet parking app, charging his laptop and tapping stable internet. "When I work, I forget everything and focus on the coding," Zaeem said. "I stop thinking about my family's basic needs," referring to his wife and three children who fled to Egypt early in the conflict. "When I'm on my laptop, I shut everything else out."

Thousands of Palestinians from Gaza register on platforms like Freelancer.com, Upwork and Mostaql, creating logos for Canadian pizza parlors, booking apps for local barbershops and websites for businesses in Kuwait and Turkey. The sector emerged over a decade ago after Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007 and Israel's blockade shrank traditional industries like agriculture and manufacturing....