If the Palestinian economy has been brought down to its knees by the devastating Israeli occupation for decades, restrictions imposed of late by Israel and Egypt have crippled Gaza’s economy with a worst crisis than any other in the world. Recurrent spurts of conflict, internal divisions and the joint embargo have left the territory “on the verge of collapse”, the World Bank said last week.
Here are some alarming figures cited in a report drafted by Steen Lau Jorgensen, the World Bank’s director for Gaza and the West Bank. Gaza’s overall unemployment now stands at 43% with 68% among those aged 20-24: the highest rate in the world. Current real GDP is only a couple of percentage points higher than it was 20 years ago, but the population has jumped by 230% over the same period. Last year’s war between Israel and Hamas led to a 15% contraction in GDP; between 1994 and 2012, Gaza’s manufacturing sector, a key driver of the economy, contracted by a whopping 60%.
Israel has quite evidently been looking to ruin Gaza’s economy with a covert design to bomb the strip’s rudimentary infrastructure to rubble during last year’s conflict. The destruction during the war was the worst in nearly 20 years, according to relief agency Oxfam. The cost of rebuilding after 50 days of massive Israeli shelling and aerial bombardment would cost as high as $10bn, according to UN estimates.
More than 80% of Gazans now receive some form of aid, but 40% remain below the poverty line. Experts estimate that a third of children displayed post-traumatic stress disorder even before the 2014 conflict, the World Bank report said. “The status quo in Gaza is unsustainable,” Jorgensen said. “The feeling of hopelessness is pervasive.”
Israel’s prolonged restrictions stifle much of Palestinian economic life. It controls every access point, which enables it to oversee all imports and exports, creating bureaucratic hurdles that Palestinians say kill entrepreneurship. Amid a seemingly muted international pressure on Israel, 1.8mn Gazans people still languish in what British Prime Minister David Cameron called an “open prison” in 2010.
Undisputedly, Qatar has always been a major contributor to the reconstruction of Gaza. The country last year started executing what it promised with construction projects in Gaza at a cost of more than $400mn. US Secretary of State John Kerry then welcomed the move and urged other Arab countries would follow Qatar’s lead.
Sure, there is no military solution to this decades-long conflict and the prolonged crisis is not in anyone’s interest. But from a Palestinian perspective, it’s high time the split factions put up a united front against the occupation. Longer term, promoting economic development and social interaction in Gaza is in the greater interest of Israel, Palestine and the rest of the region.
