FRUSTRATION WAS written all over his face. Ala', 16, had been standing for hours waiting for someone to buy his bike. He is one of scores of boys his age who gathered Friday morning in the Faras market, the main flea market in Gaza, to sell their bicycles.

"I want to buy some school books and my father, who is unemployed, doesn't have enough money for them," said Ala', who is a sophomore in high school. "I had no other choice but to sell my bicycle," he said, looking embarrassed.

By selling his bicycle, Ala' will have to walk two kilometers every day to and from school. Although the other boys each have their own reasons for selling their bicycles, they have all decided to bear the daily walk to school in return for spending their bikes' worth on what they consider more important matters.

The extremely difficult economic circumstances have most residents of the Gaza Strip seeing their possessions as luxuries that can be done without. A walk around the Faras market on Friday and Saturday mornings shows many residents selling their belongings, not to buy new and better replacements, but to earn money on urgently needed items. People are even selling personal property like televisions and furniture.

Since the beginning of the Intifada, many women in the Gaza Strip have also been selling their jewelry to support their families and to help their husbands shoulder the burdens of daily life.

Ghassan Al Jama'i, who lives in a refugee camp in the central region of the Gaza Strip, says that his wife only has one gold chain left from the jewelry he bought her when they first married. Ghassan has been unemployed since the beginning of the Intifada, and so they have sold her jewelry to cover life's basic necessities. Ghassan's wife is nine months pregnant and he plans on selling her last necklace to cover the costs of a hospital delivery.

More than 60 percent of Gazans live below the poverty line, and unemployment in the Gaza Strip is now more than 56 percent. More than 1.3 million residents live in an area smaller than 365 square kilometers, while over one third of this area is controlled by 4,000 settlers.