Israel told to lift Gaza blockade
Israel’s blockade of the Hamasruled Gaza Strip has cost the seaside territory as much as US$16.7 billion ($23.85b) in economic losses and sent poverty and unemployment skyrocketing, a UN report said yesterday, as it called on Israel to lift the closure.
The report by the UN Conference on Trade and Development echoed calls by numerous international bodies over the years criticising the blockade.
But its findings, looking at an 11-year period ending in 2018, marked perhaps the most detailed analysis of the Israeli policy to date.
Prolonged closure and military operations have left Gaza’s regional economy on the verge of collapse. Israel imposed the blockade in 2007 after Hamas, an Islamic militant group that opposes Israel’s existence, violently seized control of Gaza from the forces of the internationally recognised Palestinian Authority.
The Israeli measures, along with restrictions by neighbouring Egypt, have tightly controlled the movement of people and goods in and out of the territory.
Israel says the restrictions are needed to keep Hamas from building up its military capabilities.
But critics say the blockade has amounted to collective punishment, hurting the living conditions of Gaza’s 2 million inhabitants while failing to oust Hamas or moderate its behaviour.
Gaza has almost no clean drinking water, it suffers from frequent power outages and people cannot freely travel abroad.
“The result is the near collapse of the regional Gaza economy while trade is severely restricted from the rest of the Palestinian economy and the world,” the UN agency said in a statement.
The report analysed both the effects of the closure, which has greatly limited Gaza’s ability to export goods, as well as the effects of the three wars, which took place in 2008-2009, 2012 and 2014.
The last war was especially devastating, killing more than 2200 Palestinians, more than half of them civilians, and displacing some 100,000 people from homes that were damaged or destroyed, according to UN figures. Seventythree people, including six civilians, were killed on the Israeli side, according to Israel’s Foreign Ministry, and indiscriminate Hamas rocketfire brought life to a standstill in southern Israel.
Using two methodologies, the report said that overall economic losses due to the blockade and wars ranged from US$7.8b to US$16.7b. It said Gaza’s economy grew by a total of just 4.8 per cent during the entire period, even as its population grew over 40 per cent.
These economic losses helped propel unemployment in Gaza from 35 per cent in 2006 to 52 per cent in 2018, one of the highest rates in the world, UNCTAD said. It said the poverty rate jumped from 39 per cent in 2007 to 55 per cent in 2017.
“The impact is the impoverishment of the people of Gaza, who are already under blockade,” said Mahmoud Elkhafif, author of the report.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry accused UNCTAD of presenting a “one-sided and distorted depiction” that disregards “terrorist organisations’ control over the Gaza Strip and their responsibility for what occurs in the Gaza Strip”.