Rabab Deifallah sits inside her tent, pressing a worn lighter over and over, trying to coax a spark strong enough to light the wood in her stove. The 46-year-old mother of five has kept the small device close, and her son has repaired it several times since Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza made new lighters nearly impossible to find.
Firewood has become central to Rabab’s daily routine. She uses it to bake bread, warm water for her children, cook meals and prepare tea, especially with cooking gas scarce and fuel prices punishingly high. “Our whole daily life depends on fire,” she told Al Jazeera. “But getting a fire started begins with a lighter and this small object has become one of the hardest things to find in Gaza.”
Before the war, lighters were so inexpensive and common that Rabab recalls buying three for one shekel, or about $0.33. Now a new lighter can cost between $27 and $33, and Rabab says she recently paid $12 just to have her old one fixed. “Should I spend that amount on a lighter, or should I buy a bag of flour?” she asked.
With limited money going first to food, families across Gaza often share a single lighter among several tents. On days when Rabab cannot find a lighter at all, her family endures cold meals or waits for a neighbour’s fire to borrow a spark. She sometimes sends a piece of cardboard to a neighbour’s tent to collect a flame and carry it home. At other times, if a neighbour is baking bread, she asks to use their oven to cook for her own family.
The lighter, she says, is the starting point for everything: fire, food, bread and hot water. She guards it carefully, aware that without it, even the simplest daily tasks become impossible.
Nearby, 43-year-old Hasnaa Mansour faces the same problem from a different angle. Displaced from Jabalia refugee camp, she sits beside a clay oven she has held onto since her family’s finances unravelled during the war. Her husband used to work as a tailor, and the family lived reasonably comfortably. But with little work coming in, Hasnaa now bakes and sells food to help support their six children.
Hasnaa has repeatedly repaired her lighter because buying a new one is beyond her means. The shortage of cooking gas has made her situation worse. “With gas, all you need is a small spark to light it. But with the oven, I need a real fire,” she said. “I’ve been sitting here since the morning and by 10 o’clock I still couldn’t light the oven. I sent my young daughter with a piece of cardboard to look for someone who had a fire burning, but she couldn’t find anyone.”
The lighter shortage is part of a wider siege. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says restrictions on the movement of goods and closures of crossings have contributed to shortages and rising prices of essential supplies. Items classified by Israeli authorities as “dual-use” face additional hurdles in getting approval to enter Gaza, OCHA reports.
In June, the Gaza Chamber of Commerce and Industry said restrictions on crossings and the mechanisms for bringing commercial shipments into Gaza continued to limit the flow of goods. It noted that more than 30,000 trucks entered Gaza during the first five months of 2026, an average of no more than 191 trucks a day, still far below the territory’s pre-war daily needs. In an earlier publication, the chamber documented the emergence of lighter-repair work during the war, saying lighters were among the items prevented from entering Gaza.
That explains why lighters are now so valuable and why families spend relatively large amounts to repair them rather than replace them. For Shadi Abu Shamlah, a displaced father living with his family at Al-Karmel School west of Gaza City, the shortage has turned a once trivial item into a shared necessity. “The whole school here… you wouldn’t find more than four lighters,” he said.
The few lighters available pass from tent to tent as families try to cook, heat water or make hot drinks. “The lighter today is the backbone of life. If you have a lighter in your tent, you’re okay. If you don’t have one, you’re stuck,” he said. “The simplest things need fire. You want a cup of tea, you want to cook, you want to make milk for a child… you need fire.”
Abu Shamlah says his family sometimes goes to bed without dinner because they cannot light a fire. Repairing lighters has also become difficult. A lighter flint can cost 25 to 30 shekels, or $8 to $10, and some people resort to refilling lighters with gas from larger cylinders, an act that sometimes causes burns.
Tamer Al-Shawish, a 24-year-old father of two who once worked as a driver, has turned to repairing lighters to support his family. At a small stall near Al-Karmel school camp, he says his new trade was practically unheard of before the war. “The war has forced us into jobs and work we never knew before. I started repairing lighters so I could provide for my family’s needs,” he told Al Jazeera.
“Before the war, no one needed to repair a lighter. They were cheap and available. When the gas ran out, we would throw it away and buy another one,” Tamer said. “People come to repair the lighter because it is cheaper than buying a new one, especially with the high prices and shortages of basic goods.” He salvages parts from damaged lighters to fix others. “Even an old lighter has value now. We take parts from damaged lighters and use them to repair other lighters, so they last longer.”
Amid Gaza’s broader shortages, the humble lighter has become an unlikely measure of daily struggle. For families like Rabab’s, the ability to start a fire is no longer a given. It is a fragile privilege, fought over, repaired and shared, one spark at a time.
