GAZA CITY

WHEN Mohammed Sawiri was rich, he bought his lover a cellphone so they could secretly text. He was a “tunnel millionaire,” one of the thousands of Palestinians who became wealthy overnight, by Gaza standards, earning $18 a day hauling goods through one of the hundreds of passageways under the border between Gaza and Egypt.

The high school dropout was 17 when he began working in a tunnel. Now, at 23, Mr. Sawiri sells 25-cent cups of tea, Turkish coffee and Nescafé in a Gaza park, facing an ice cream shop where he once ate $1.25 vanilla ices. On a good day, he makes $5, and instead of texting his lover, he slips her letters.

“I used to choose the most expensive places,” Mr. Sawiri said, sighing, from his tea stand in the Unknown Soldier Park — named for a statue commemorating Palestinian fighters that was torn down nine years ago by Islamists. “You pimps, I used to eat in your place,” he added, addressing the ice cream shop on an overcast day. “Now you mock me because I am a tea seller.”

Mr. Sawiri is among the thousands of men thrown out of work last year as Egypt cracked down on the tunnels, accusing Gaza’s Islamist Hamas rulers of offering safe passage to militants fleeing Egypt. The men swelled the idle work force in Gaza, where unemployment has soared to 44 percent since last summer’s war with Israel.