UN warns of ‘staggering’ economic devastation in West Bank, Gaza amid Israeli war

“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,” a report published by the UN Trade and Development agency (UNCTAD) found.

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 number of people who do not have enough food to eat in the besieged Palestinian territory, it noted.

Eighty-two 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 added.

Spiralling violence in the West Bank, meanwhile, has 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 soldiers and settlers have killed at least 700 Palestinians in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

At least 24 Israelis, including members of the security forces, have been killed in Palestinian attacks during the same period, Israeli officials said.

The report said factors like settlement expansion, land confiscation, demolition of Palestinian structures and increased settler violence had displaced West Bank communities and severely impacted economic activities.

About 80 percent of businesses in Jerusalem’s Old City have either partially or completely ceased operations, UNCTAD added.

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

The report showed that 96 percent of West Bank businesses decreased activity and more than 42 percent reduced their workforces.

In all, 306,000 jobs have been lost, pushing the West Bank’s unemployment rate from nearly 13 percent before Israel launched its war on Gaza to 32 percent.

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

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