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".

"Production processes have been disrupted or decimated, income sources have disappeared, poverty has intensified and expanded, neighbourhoods have been eradicated and communities and towns have been ruined," the UN Trade and Development agency (UNCTAD) said in a new report.

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 retaliation has killed at least 41,118 people in Gaza, according to the territory's health ministry. The UN rights office says most of the dead are women and children.

And the Palestinian territory has been left in ruins.

- 'Decades' -

Mutasim Elagraa, who coordinates UNCTAD's Palestinian assistance programme, said it remained unclear how much it would cost to rebuild.

"But the evidence we have now (indicates) it will be high tens of billions or maybe even more," he told reporters in Geneva.

"It will take decades to bring Gaza back to where it was in October 2023."

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

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

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

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, pointing out that GDP there had contracted 19 percent in the final quarter of 2023.

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 24 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 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.

- 79% unemployment -

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.