Economy in Gaza would not recover its 2022 levels until 2092, according to UN report

Gaza's economy will suffer such a huge impact from the war with Israel that its GDP will plummet by 24% in 2023 compared to the previous year.a figure that is even higher (-26.1%) in the case of GDP per capita.

This is the projection published this Wednesday by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD, in English) in its report on “the social and economic deterioration in Gaza”, which uses innovative satellite images that are incorporated into the official data.

The war launched by Israel against the strip after the Hamas attacks on October 7 came at a time when Gaza's economy was already seriously affected, since it had registered a decrease in GDP by 4.5% in the first three quarters, that is, just before those attacks.

Already then, with the population suffering collective confinement, Two thirds of the population of Gaza lived in poverty, and unemployment reached 45% of the population, which also suffered from poor access to water and electricity and poor sewerage.

Even if the war ended today and reconstruction began immediately, Gaza would not recover the levels of 2022 until 2092, if the previous growth continues, which between 2007 and 2022 had an average of 0.4%.

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In the most optimistic scenario of this growth escalating to 10% annually, reaching the level of 2006 (the year before Israel's blockade) would only be possible in 2035.

If the 2014 war required financial commitments of $3.9 billion from the international community, today that figure will have to be multiplied “several times,” the report states.

The organization recalls that the current war has displaced 85% of the population and that the strip, in its entirety, “has become practically uninhabitable with the population lacking sources of income, access to water, health or education.”

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“A return to the pre-conflict status is not an option,” recalls the report, which highlights the high dependence of the Gazan population on international assistance, even without taking into account the current conflict.

But even foreign assistance has only decreased in recent years: if in 2008 it was 2 billion dollars, it fell to 550 million in 2022.

For UNCTAD, The solution to all these problems necessarily involves “ending the military operations, ending the blockade (of Israel) and advance the two-state solution according to pre-1967 borders.

After 118 years of war in Gaza, more than 27,000 Gazans have died, according to the Strip's Ministry of Health said this Thursday, and it is also estimated that there are almost 8,000 dead bodies under the rubble.

The ministry has recorded 27,019 deaths and 66,139 injuries since October 7 to date. In the last 24 hours, 118 deaths and 190 injuries were recorded.

There are “numerous victims under the rubble and on roads, while the occupation (Israel) prevents ambulances and civil protection teams from reaching them,” denounced the Ministry's spokesperson, Ashraf al Qudra.

The official Palestinian agency Wafa reported dozens of Gazan deaths and injuries in “Israeli shelling and artillery and missile fire” in the west of the city of
Gaza, in the Rimal and Tal al Hawa neighborhoods, where the ambulances could not arrive to take them to the Shifa hospital.

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“Several civilians were killed and dozens injured after occupation planes bombed two houses in the Zaytun neighborhood, southeast of the city of
Gaza,” the agency added.

Although much of the Israeli offensive is focused inside Khan Younis, where the Naser and Al Amal hospitals remain under siege for the eleventh consecutive day, the latter managed by the Palestinian Red Crescent, which denounced that Israeli troops were shooting at anyone who would try to get out.

Wafa also indicates that the Israeli navy fired against the southern coasts of the Strip, towards Al Wusta and Rafah, an area in which there were also aerial bombardments on vacant land on the border with Egypt.

More than 1 million Gazans are concentrated in Rafah, almost half of the total population of the Strip, evacuated and overcrowded, where contagious diseases are spreading.

EFE