The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) on Sunday said that more than half of Gaza’s population suffered from poverty during 2017.
A report showed that 53% of Palestinians in Gaza are poor compared to 13.9% in the West Bank with an average of 29.2% in both territories.
This high poverty rate has mainly resulted from the ongoing Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip since 2007.
According to the PCBS report %29.2 of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip lived on a monthly average of 2470 shekels ($685) for a family of five.
Extreme poverty rate in Palestine in 2017 was %16.8 with an average monthly expenditure of 1974 shekels ($547) for a family of five.
Poverty rate in Gaza which is populated by 2 million Palestinians was four times higher than the West Bank with its 2.8 million Palestinians while extreme poverty was six times higher.
The PCBS compared poverty rates in 2011 and 2017. The results revealed that poverty and extreme poverty rates increased in 2017 by 13.2% and 30.2% respectively.
UN organizations said that the Gaza Strip will be uninhabitable by 2020 because of the lack of clean drinking water while the UN in 2017 said that 80% of Gaza residents live on humanitarian aid.
It’s 15th April and about 58000 Palestinian Authority employees in Gaza have not yet received their monthly salaries for March although their counterparts in the West Bank received theirs last week.
