The World Bank on Tuesday warned that the economy in the Gaza Strip is “collapsing” mainly due to the 12-year blockade on the coastal enclave in addition to cuts in donor aid.
It said in a report that one in two people in Gaza suffers from poverty. The unemployment rate has reached more than 50% and 70% of young people are jobless.
The report described the economy as being in “free fall” shrinking by 6% in the first quarter of 2018 and warned of “further deterioration since then”.
It cited a number of factors affecting the besieged enclave other than the blockade such as the Palestinian Authority’s sanctions and the winding down of the US aid program.
The World Bank is due to present its report to a high-level meeting of a committee responsible for coordinating development assistance to the Palestinians on Wednesday in New York.
“A combination of war isolation and internal rivalries has left Gaza in a crippling economic state and exacerbated the human distress” said Marina Wes the World Bank’s director in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
“Increased frustration is feeding into the increased tensions which have already started spilling over into unrest and setting back the human development of the region’s large youth population” she added.
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are struggling to make ends meet and suffering from worsening poverty and rising unemployment as a result of a blockade imposed on them by Israel since 2006 and described by UN reports as “the worst” in the world.
The Higher National Committee for the Great March of Return and Breaking the Siege on Gaza said that the World Bank’s report highlights serious implications that the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is “catastrophic”.
Spokesman for the committee Adham Abu Salmya said that the report gives the Palestinian people in Gaza more reasons to continue their protests against the Israeli occupation until the siege is lifted “once and forever”.
Abu Salmya called on concerned international organizations to act immediately and put an end to the “crime” committed against two million people in the Gaza Strip.
He also called on the Arab League and “free countries” around the world to exert more efforts toward ending the suffering of the Gazan people and pressure for opening Rafah crossing and allowing relief and medical convoys into the besieged territory.
