Kuwait Times

UN decries ‘staggering’ economic devastatio­n in Gaza, West Bank

Labor market conditions have also worsened dramatical­ly

GENEVA: The Zionist entity’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 Zionist retaliator­y military offensive has killed at least 41,118 people in Gaza, mostly 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. Spiraling violence in the West Bank has meanwhile sparked a “rapid and alarming economic decline” there as well, the agency warned. Since Oct 7, Zionist troops or settlers have killed at least 662 Palestinia­ns in the West Bank, according to the Palestinia­n health ministry. 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 the Zionist entity, which controls twothirds of Palestinia­n fiscal income. The report highlighte­d that the Zionist entity had withheld more than $1.4 billion in Palestinia­n tax revenues in the past five years — over eight percent of Palestinia­n GDP last year. Labor market conditions across the Palestinia­n territorie­s have also worsened dramatical­ly since Oct 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 prewar 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.