Gazans Delight in Home-Produced Chocolate Goodies

Workers at al-Arees sweets factory sort a batch of chocolate-covered biscuits in Gaza City on February 5, 2020. (Photo by Emmanuel DUNAND / AFP)
Workers at al-Arees sweets factory sort a batch of chocolate-covered biscuits in Gaza City on February 5, 2020. (Photo by Emmanuel DUNAND / AFP)
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Gazans Delight in Home-Produced Chocolate Goodies

Workers at al-Arees sweets factory sort a batch of chocolate-covered biscuits in Gaza City on February 5, 2020. (Photo by Emmanuel DUNAND / AFP)
Workers at al-Arees sweets factory sort a batch of chocolate-covered biscuits in Gaza City on February 5, 2020. (Photo by Emmanuel DUNAND / AFP)

Off a bumpy dirt road in Gaza city, a group of children stood outside a half-open factory door, desperate to get their hands on what was being made inside. 

"We want chocolate!" they shouted at a worker as he left the Al-Arees factory, which despite daunting obstacles churns out treats ranging from chocolate-covered biscuits to a Gazan version of a world famous spread, dubbed here 'Natalia'. 

Buckling in the face of candy-crazed kids, the man popped behind the door and returned with enough free chocolate to rot their growing teeth, Agence France Presse reported.

Al-Arees's products are Gazan but their components are not, as few of the basic raw ingredients are produced in the impoverished Mediterranean coastal strip. 

The factory relies on chocolate from as far as Argentina, sugar from African countries and dried eggs from the Netherlands, with other essentials imported from Turkey and Israel. 

Israel controls all goods that enter Gaza.

Gaza has no airport. Goods for the strip are usually brought into Ashdod, an Israeli port around 35 kilometres north of the strip.

Getting them into Gaza requires patience and money.

"From Ashdod we pay for workers and trucks that take these goods to the Kerem Shalom border crossing (between Gaza and Israel)," said Wael Ai, head of Al-Arees.

"Then you take them out of the truck for checks, then onto another truck from Gaza and after about 500 metres you have another checkpoint for Hamas," he added.

"I pay customs twice," he told AFP, meaning once in Ashdod where Israel collects fees on behalf of the official Palestinian government based in the West Bank and then in Gaza to Hamas.

Due to Gaza's electricity shortages, Ai has installed three fuel-guzzling generators. "If you want anything done in Gaza you have to do it yourself," he said.

Nutella may be a global phenomena, but Gazans clamor for Natalia, their own version of a chocolate and hazelnut spread.

Local factories also make Crimpos, a large marshmallow coated in a thick layer of chocolate.

The treats are popular, but not necessarily profitable. 

Four hundred grams of Natalia sells for just three or four shekels (about a dollar) while Crimpos sell for as little as five shekels per box of 20.

With Gaza's unemployment rate at nearly 50 percent, there is little space to raise prices domestically. 

And exports to more lucrative markets are largely banned by Israel, which permits some vegetables and clothing to be sold abroad but not processed food.

Maher al-Tabbaa of the Gaza Chamber of Commerce insisted that factories in the strip make attractive products that are "forbidden from leaving Gaza."

"They are banned from being exported even to the West Bank," he told AFP.

"In Gaza we have a limited market, so the banning of exports weakens the industry," he added.



Hundreds of Firefighters Battling Wildfire in Southern France

An Airbus H125 helicopter drops water over a wildfire in Saint-Julien Les Martigues, northwest of Marseille in southern France on July 18, 2025. (Photo by Christophe SIMON / AFP)
An Airbus H125 helicopter drops water over a wildfire in Saint-Julien Les Martigues, northwest of Marseille in southern France on July 18, 2025. (Photo by Christophe SIMON / AFP)
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Hundreds of Firefighters Battling Wildfire in Southern France

An Airbus H125 helicopter drops water over a wildfire in Saint-Julien Les Martigues, northwest of Marseille in southern France on July 18, 2025. (Photo by Christophe SIMON / AFP)
An Airbus H125 helicopter drops water over a wildfire in Saint-Julien Les Martigues, northwest of Marseille in southern France on July 18, 2025. (Photo by Christophe SIMON / AFP)

Nearly 1,000 firefighters and helicopters battled a wildfire about 40 kilometers (25 miles) northwest of France's second-largest city Marseille on Friday, but officials said lower temperatures and increased humidity had improved the situation.

The 240-hectare (593 acres) wildfire flared up a week after a separate conflagration reached the northwestern outskirts of Marseille, forcing people to evacuate or into lockdown and temporarily shuttering the area's airport.

Pierre Bepoix, the colonel of rescue operations and deputy director for the area's firefighters, said 150 people had been evacuated, but firefighters had managed to save 150 homes and portions of the area's forests.

"It was a fire that swept through relatively dense vegetation ... which made our work particularly complicated," Bepoix told Reuters. "Obviously, priority was given to the preservation and protection of these homes and the lives that could be in these buildings."

Local officials said in a statement that 120 homes had been threatened by the fire, adding that it was not possible yet to identify any possible damage to them, and that two firefighters had been injured.

Meanwhile in Spain, a wildfire that broke out on Thursday evening in the central Toledo province and could be seen from downtown Madrid, ravaged 3,200 hectares of woodland.

Regional emergency services said early on Friday firefighters had secured the perimeter, though there were concerns over strong winds and high temperatures forecast throughout the day.