GENEVA: Israel's war against Hamas has damaged around half of all buildings in Gaza and rendered the Palestinian territory uninhabitable, with tens of billions of dollars needed to rebuild it, the UN said Wednesday.
Since the war erupted in the Gaza Strip following Hamas's deadly October 7 attacks inside Israel, the United Nations said the decline in living conditions had been "precipitous".
The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) estimated that by late November, 37,379 buildings -- the equivalent of 18 percent of the Gaza Strip's total structures -- had been damaged or destroyed in Israel's military offensive.
And since then, satellite data indicates swelling destruction, according to Rami Alazzeh, an UNCTAD economist focused on assistance to the Palestinian people, who co-authored the report.
"The new data says that 50 percent of the structures in Gaza are (damaged or) destroyed," he told AFP, warning that "the longer these (military) operations in Gaza go on... the more severe the impact will be".
"Gaza currently is uninhabitable."
GDP contracted by a quarter
The war was triggered by Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of around 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Militants also seized about 250 hostages. Israel says 132 of them remain in Gaza including at least 29 people believed to have been killed.
Following the deadliest attack in Israel's history, its military launched a withering air, land and sea offensive that has killed at least 26,900 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.
UNCTAD recalled that Gaza was in a dire state before the war erupted, with a 17-year blockade and repeated military operations leaving around 80 per cent of the population dependent on international aid.
Using satellite imagery and official data, the UN agency estimated that Gaza's economy had already contracted by 4.5 per cent in the first three quarters of 2023.
"The military operation has greatly accelerated the decline and precipitated a 24-percent GDP contraction and a 26.1-percent drop in GDP per capita for the entire year," UNCTAD said in a statement.
Alazzeh pointed out that the decline in GDP per capita seen last year was equivalent to that suffered during the entire blockade period and through six prior military operations.
And while 45 per cent of Gaza's workforce were unemployed before October 7, the jobless rate had surged to nearly 80 percent by December.
"All of the economic sector in Gaza has ground to a halt," Alazzeh said, adding that virtually the only people working are those involved in humanitarian operations.
Tens of billions
UNCTAD estimated that even if reconstruction started immediately and Gaza returned to the average growth rate seen in the past 15 years of 0.4 per cent, it would take seven decades for the territory to return to just its 2022 GDP level.
Massive international aid would be needed, it said, especially if the goal is to push Gazan development to a more livable level.
"There is no doubt that it will amount to several tens of billions of dollars by any conservative estimation," the report said.
The agency stressed that any resolution of the crisis would require an end to the military operation and lifting of the blockade and movement towards a two-state solution.
The goal, it said, cannot be to simply "return to the pre-October 2023 status quo".
"The vicious circle of destruction and partial reconstruction needs to be broken."
