RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Gaza’s farmers have increasingly suffered since the Israeli siege was first imposed in 2006. Despite the Ministry of Agriculture’s announcement of self-sufficiency, the fluctuation of international support and Israel preventing the exportation of agricultural products have destroyed the only source of livelihood for farmers, especially after the recent war.

In the western part of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, Israeli reconnaissance planes never stopped their sweeps over the vast agricultural land, where only one farmer was planting flowers. Al-Monitor's correspondent handpicked the last of the clove flowers that once flourished in the Strip — which was famous for exporting flowers around the world — before the farmers stopped planting them due to the lack of Dutch support for this year.

Notably, the cultivated flowers here are not up to the international standards and flowers are now worn out cuttings from an Israeli mother-plant as farmers cannot buy seedlings. Some are cultivated for the domestic market, where the demand for flowers has significantly decreased as a result of the deteriorating economic situation.

The director of the Marketing Department at the Ministry of Agriculture, Tahseen al-Saqqa, told Al-Monitor, “The Dutch government was implementing a project to provide farmers with seedlings and the necessary supplies for the cultivation of flowers, at a rate that was being reduced every year since 2010. However, the support completely stopped this year and the farmers could no longer afford the costs, so the cultivation of flowers ended.”