Israel’s genocide has so devastated every aspect of Gaza’s infrastructure and economy that it would take centuries just to restore the Gaza Strip’s GDP back to the already-depressed level from 2022, the UN has found in a report.
Based on the growth rate of Gaza’s economy under Israeli blockade between 2007 and 2022, it would take 350 years to restore Gaza’s GDP from before the genocide, according to a report by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
Between October 2023 and May 2024, Gaza’s GDP per capita was reduced by over a half, while Israel caused over $18.5 billion worth of damage to Gaza’s infrastructure in just the first four months of the genocide, the report said. The infrastructure destruction alone in that time is equivalent to seven times Gaza’s 2022 GDP, the report says.
As the report notes, Israel’s suppression of Gaza’s economy started long before the genocide. In 2007, Israeli authorities intensified their control over Gaza, compounding the region’s isolation from the world after decades of occupation by issuing a land, sea and air blockade. Gaza’s severely depressed economy and the humanitarian crisis created by the blockade prompted humanitarian groups to label Gaza as “almost unlivable” even before the genocide.
Previous Israeli military incursions had further damaged Gaza’s economy, as the region was unable to recover from the majority of the destruction caused by Israel’s bombardments, UNCTAD noted.
That suppression caused Gaza’s GDP to lose out on $35.8 billion of unrealized GDP potential between 2007 and 2023, UNCTAD found — or the equivalent of 17 times Gaza’s GDP in 2023. In that period, Gaza’s GDP had only grown by 1.1 percent, even though its population grew by 61 percent, the report said.
Israel has caused “unparalleled devastation” and “economic collapse” in Gaza, the report warned.
“The intense military operations in Gaza resulted in an unprecedented humanitarian, environmental and social catastrophe and propelled Gaza from de-development to utter ruin,” it says.
The report is yet another show of how, even if Israel were to end its killings today, the genocide will have a lasting and devastating impact on Gaza. Another report released this week by the UN Development Programme and the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia found that the genocide has set Gaza’s development back by nearly 70 years.
The report projects that poverty in the occupied Palestinian territories will rise to 75 percent, or three-quarters of the population, this year. This is more than doubling the number of impoverished people in Palestine, affecting an estimated 4.1 million people.
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