Gaza's Tech Workers Find Digital Lifeline Amid Devastation

Walaa Volidis sits in a tent in central Gaza, a laptop open in front of her, a headset around her neck. She is 24 years old. On video calls with mentors in Silicon Valley, she discusses artificial intelligence and tries to keep her skills sharp. This is not the life she imagined, but it is the life she has chosen to fight for.

When the war began, Walaa lost nearly everything at once: her job, her university, several family members. Her sisters were injured. She was living in a state of drowning, she says, but she made a decision that it would not be the end. She moved into a tent with her displaced parents and four younger siblings. She found work. She kept going.

Across Gaza, thousands of young people like Walaa are turning to the digital economy as the territory's broader recovery stalls. The unemployment rate has climbed to 80 percent—up from 22 percent before the war. Two million people depend on humanitarian aid to survive. Few legitimate ways exist to earn a decent wage. But if you have a laptop and an internet connection, you can work for clients anywhere in the world. Mercy Corps, the American humanitarian organization, now calls this a digital lifeline. "They don't want to be dependent on aid," says Nicole Hark, a representative there. "It's really critical to help people go back to work."

Before October 2023, Gaza had a growing technology sector. The blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt made it difficult for young graduates to leave the territory, so many learned to code and design remotely instead. Gaza Sky Geeks, founded in 2012 by Google and Mercy Corps, ran coding courses and helped entrepreneurs reach international markets from three bustling hubs. Two of those hubs were destroyed during the war. Now, new co-working spaces have begun to appear across Gaza, powered by generators and solar panels, offering more stable electricity and better internet than most homes can access. This matters because Gaza's power system has nearly collapsed and roughly 75 percent of its telecommunications networks have been damaged or destroyed.

Tarik Zaeem, 44, was a chief technology officer before the war. Now he is a freelance programmer working from a co-working space in Gaza City. He has built a mobile app for a barber shop and a valet parking application for a client in Saudi Arabia. When he works, he says, he forgets everything that has happened. But the money he earns goes almost entirely to support his wife and three children, who are living in Egypt after he spent his savings to help them leave early in the conflict. Getting paid is itself a problem. Few banks have reopened in Gaza, cash is scarce, and Palestinians face severe restrictions on international banking and digital payment platforms. Some workers route money through relatives abroad. Others use brokers in Gaza who charge steep fees to convert electronic transfers into cash—fees that have sometimes left Tarik with only half of what he was owed. "It's not enough for a good living," he says. "Just the basics."

The risks of the work are constant and real. In June, an air strike hit near Tarik's co-working space in Gaza City. A Palestinian student taking her exams online was killed in the street. Israel said it was targeting a Hamas operative and that it had tried to prevent civilian harm. Since the ceasefire in October 2023, at least 1,250 people have been killed in Gaza, including 265 children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry—figures the UN considers reliable. Israeli bombardments continue on a near-daily basis. Israel says it is targeting Palestinian armed groups.

Mahran Bayed lives in a tent with his wife and three young children near the ruins of al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, where his home and office once stood. He lost all his equipment in the attacks. He thought it was the end of the world. Now he freelances creating mobile apps, websites, and advertisements. He tells prospective clients that if they hire him for a three or four-month project, everything will be stored online—if something happens to him, they will still have their work. He carries an external monitor everywhere because his laptop screen was damaged. Repair workshops in Gaza do what they can with spare parts salvaged from other destroyed devices, but there are limits. The Israeli authority that controls Gaza's border crossings classifies computers and computer parts as "dual use" items and bans their import.

Walaa recently landed a full-time job with a firm based in Dubai. She is now working toward a scholarship to travel and trying to help her family build a better life. Her sister, nearly 13 years old, was injured during the war and developed lymphoedema, a chronic condition causing severe swelling in her leg. Walaa's first hope is to get her sister medical evacuation from Gaza and treatment abroad. While Gaza's wider recovery remains frozen, its tech workers offer a glimpse of what might be possible—a future built not on aid, but on work, connection, and the stubborn refusal to let circumstances define the end of the story.