UN decries 'staggering' economic devastation across Gaza, West Bank

Israel's war against Hamas has decimated Gaza's economy, shrinking it to less than one-sixth of its 2022 level, amid an "alarming decline" in the West Bank, the UN said Thursday.

Since the war erupted in the Gaza Strip more than 11 months ago, the United Nations said economic devastation has taken place at a "staggering scale".

The war erupted after Hamas's October 7 attack inside Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures, which includes hostages killed in captivity.

Israel's retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,020 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry. The UN rights office says most of the dead are women and children.

In addition to the devastating human toll, the UN Trade and Development agency (UNCTAD) pointed in a new report to the dramatic impact on the economies in both Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

By early 2024, it said, up to 96 percent of Gaza's agricultural assets, including farms, orchards, irrigation systems, machinery and storage facilities, had been "decimated".

This, it pointed out, had crippled food production capacity and worsened the already towering levels of food insecurity in the besieged Palestinian territory.

A full 82 percent of businesses in Gaza had also been damaged or destroyed.

- 'Alarming' -

In the last quarter of 2023 alone, Gaza's gross domestic product (GDP) plummeted 81 percent, leading to a 22-percent contraction for the entire year, the report found.

"By mid-2024, Gaza's economy had shrunk to less than one-sixth of its 2022 level," UNCTAD said.

Spiralling violence in the West Bank has meanwhile sparked a "rapid and alarming economic decline" there as well, the agency warned.

Since October 7, Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 662 Palestinians in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

At least 23 Israelis, including members of the security forces, have been killed in Palestinian attacks during the same period, Israeli officials say.

Thursday's report said factors like settlement expansions, land confiscation, demolition of Palestinian structures, increased settler violence and a growing number of checkpoints had displaced West Bank communities and severely impacted economic activities.

A full 80 percent of businesses in East Jerusalem Old City have either partially or completely ceased operations, UNCTAD said.

The report pointed out that there had initially been optimism for the West Bank economy in 2023, with 4-percent GDP growth registered in the first three quarters.

But that was abruptly reversed after October 7, with a 19-percent contraction in the final quarter, resulting in an annual GDP drop of 1.9 percent, while per capita GDP plunged 4.5 percent.

- 'Immense pressure' -

At the same time, the Palestinian government's fiscal stability is under "immense pressure", it said, pointing among other things to escalating revenue deductions by Israel, which controls two-thirds of Palestinian fiscal income.

The report highlighted that Israel had withheld more than $1.4 billion in Palestinian tax revenues in the past five years -- over eight percent of Palestinian GDP last year.

Labour market conditions across the Palestinian territories have also worsened dramatically since October 7.

In the West Bank, the report showed that 96 percent of businesses decreased activity, and over 42 percent reduced their workforce.

In all, 306,000 jobs have been lost, pushing the West Bank's unemployment rates from nearly 13 percent before the war to 32 percent.

In Gaza, meanwhile, a full two-thirds of pre-war jobs -- around 201,000 positions -- had been lost by January this year, the report showed.

Unemployment in the besieged territory reached 79 percent in the final quarter of 2023, up from 46 percent in the previous quarter, it said.

Even before the war, poverty was already widespread.

And now "poverty affects nearly the entire population of Gaza and is rising rapidly in the West Bank", UNCTAD said.

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