The Arab Contracting & Concrete Industry Company (ACCI) is owned by Mushtaha & Hassouna Co. LTD. Established in 1993 by Safwat Mushtaha and Rafiq Hassouna, the ACCI, a leading local contracting company, hosted the only concrete factory in the Gaza Strip. Back then, Mushtaha and Hassouna decided to relocate the factory from the industrial zone in Beit Hanoun to the Eastern Road district in Gaza, thinking it would be safer.
In 2005, the company built a new factory that soon became the biggest producer of interlock tiles in Gaza, with a production capacity of 2,000 m2/day compared to the 300–600 m2/day produced by other factories. The concrete factory, with two production lines, produced 266 m3/hour.
During the first war on Gaza in 2008, both factories were destroyed by the Israelis, just like many other establishments that were unaffiliated to any political party or militant group. Hatem Hassouna, the company’s project manager, explains that the company rebuilt the two factories within six months after the war. In 2012, during the second war, the factories sustained minor damages, and the owners decided to increase the production capacity by adding new lines for both factories during the same year. With that, the factory employed a total of 230 full-time employees and workers, who had no other source of income.
From 2012 until this summer, the concrete factory produced concrete exclusively for UN and Qatari projects, under the constant heavy surveillance of several parties. Not a single bag of concrete was sold to any other buyer. With a special coordination to import the raw materials from Israel, they could only import enough material to meet the demands of their specific projects.
Then came July 25, 2014. The two factories were, once again, obliterated by the Israelis. Hatem describes the scene: the army used the factory as a base for their operations in the area. Once they were done, they used everything in their weaponry to destroy it: F16 bombs to destroy the factories’ buildings and warehouses and everything inside, tank shelling to make sure nothing was left untouched, gun machines to shoot open the bags and allow everything to spill out, and bulldozers to turn every single thing into microscopic pebbles.
Why? They know our products aren’t used in building tunnels – they oversee everything we sell! Tiles? When was the last time you saw pictures of a tunnel that was tiled? Our factory is one of about 78 construction-material factories that were destroyed during this war. If you bring all the money in the world, how are we going to rebuild Gaza without the material to do it? How are we going to repair what is left of Gaza’s economy, with a total of 236 factories left in total destruction?
Regardless, Hatem did not leave me on a pessimistic note. He courageously noted that in 2008, when the two factories were first destroyed, they rebuilt them in six months and increased their production capacity. “The destruction did not make us surrender or give up on working in Gaza,” he adds. “On the contrary, it made us much stronger and more determined. We will rebuild our factories again, and will triple and quadruple our production capacity. They destroy, and we rebuild.”
»Yasmeen El-Khoudary works towards the preservation of the cultural heritage and history of Gaza. Visit her blog at yelkhoudary.blogspot.com.
