(Geneva) The war waged by Israel against Hamas for more than 11 months has caused economic “devastation” of “staggering magnitude” in Gaza and, by extension, in the West Bank, the UN denounced on Thursday.
In Gaza, “productive processes have been interrupted or destroyed, sources of income have disappeared, poverty has intensified and spread, neighborhoods have been eradicated, and communities and cities have been ruined,” said a report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) published on Thursday.
The military operation “has caused unprecedented humanitarian, environmental and social crises and transformed the region from one of underdevelopment to one of devastation.”
The war broke out after Hamas’ unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, followed by an intense and uninterrupted military retaliatory operation since October 2023.
The Hamas attack in Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures, which include hostages killed in captivity.
The Israeli military operation has killed more than 41,000 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-controlled territory’s health ministry. The U.N. human rights office says most of the dead are women and children.
Catastrophic economic assessment
In addition to the devastating human toll, the economic toll is catastrophic. The report’s authors estimate that Gaza’s gross domestic product (GDP) “fell by 81 percent in the last quarter of 2023, leading to a 22 percent contraction for the year as a whole.”
“By mid-2024, Gaza’s economy has fallen to less than one-sixth of its 2022 level,” said the UNCTAD report, which based its calculations on quarterly figures from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.
By early 2024, between 80 and 96 percent of Gaza’s agricultural assets – including irrigation systems, livestock farms, orchards, machinery and storage facilities – “had been decimated,” UNCTAD said, exacerbating “already high levels of food insecurity.”
“The destruction also hit the private sector hard, with 82 percent of businesses, a key driver of Gaza’s economy, damaged or destroyed,” the report added.
The West Bank too
The Hamas attack and Israeli retaliation have also exacerbated tensions in the neighboring West Bank and caused an economic decline that is “as rapid as it is alarming.”
Since October 7, Israeli forces and Israeli settlers have killed at least 662 Palestinians in the territory, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
At least 23 Israelis, including members of the security forces, were killed in Palestinian attacks during the same period, according to Israeli officials.
While the West Bank had posted growth of 4% in the first nine months of last year, optimism was “abruptly dashed by an unprecedented contraction of 19% in the fourth quarter,” leading to “a substantial decline in living standards and household incomes.”
The expansion of illegal settlements, land confiscation, demolition of Palestinian structures, increased settler violence and a growing number of checkpoints have had a deleterious effect on economic activities.
Even East Jerusalem has been hit hard. “80 percent of businesses in the Old City” have partially or completely ceased operations, the report said.
PHOTO AHMAD GHARABLI, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
People walk past closed shops in an alley in Jerusalem’s Old City.
Across the country, almost all companies are reporting a drop in activity and 42.1% are reporting a reduction in their workforce.
The unemployment rate jumped from 12.9 percent before the conflict to 32 percent, “seriously eroding the economic resilience of Palestinian households and exacerbating social hardship.”
In Gaza, two-thirds of pre-war jobs have disappeared.
Even before the war, poverty was widespread, but today it “affects almost the entire population of Gaza and is increasing rapidly in the West Bank,” according to UNCTAD.