GENEVA: The poverty rate across the Palestinian territories will almost double this year to 74.3 percent after months of fighting in Gaza, according to a report by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) released Tuesday.
“The immediate consequence of the war, not just in physical infrastructure destruction, but also in terms of poverty, livelihoods and loss of livelihoods, is enormous,” Achim Steiner, head of the UNDP, said.
The poverty rate had been 38.8 percent at the end of 2023 but another 2.61 million Palestinians fell into poverty this year, bringing the total to 4.1 million.
“It’s quite clear from this socio-economic assessment, that the level of destruction has set back the state of Palestine by years, if not decades, in terms of its development pathway,” Steiner said.
The study estimates that this year unemployment in the Palestinian territories could rise to 49.9 percent and that GDP will be 35.1 percent lower than without the war in Gaza.
He said that even if humanitarian aid is delivered each year, the Palestinian economy will not return to its pre-crisis levels for a decade or more.
Recovery will also require support to rebuild destroyed capital and the lifting of “stifling economic conditions.”
The study says Israel’s bombing campaign created 42 million tonnes of rubble in Gaza, creating major health risks. The destruction of solar panels is particularly dangerous given the lead and other heavy metals they release.
The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7 last year which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
Israel’s bombing and ground offensives in Gaza have killed 42,603 people, a majority civilians, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, figures the UN considers reliable.
UN: Poverty rate in Palestinian territories seen doubling to 74.3% this year
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UN: Poverty rate in Palestinian territories seen doubling to 74.3% this year
- The poverty rate had been 38.8 percent at the end of 2023 but another 2.61 million Palestinians fell into poverty this year
- Even if humanitarian aid is delivered each year, the Palestinian economy will not return to its pre-crisis levels for a decade or more
Activists say at least 31 killed in Sudan army strike on mosque Sunday
The attack occurred “after evening prayers” on Sunday in the capital of Al-Jazira state just south of Khartoum, the Wad Madani Resistance Committee, one of hundreds of volunteer groups coordinating aid across the war-torn country, said in a statement to AFP early on Tuesday.
They accused the army of using “barrel bombs,” adding that over half of the dead remained unidentified as rescuers combed through the remains of “dozens of charred and mutilated bodies.”
War has raged between the Sudanese armed forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces since April 2023, killing tens of thousands of people and creating the world’s largest displacement and humanitarian crises.
The two forces are locked in brutal combat over central Sudan’s agricultural Al-Jazira state, which has been under paramilitary control since late last year.
Both sides have been accused of war crimes, including targeting civilians, indiscriminately shelling residential areas and blocking or looting aid.
The RSF has been specifically accused of rampant looting, laying siege to entire villages and systematic sexual violence in Al-Jazira and across Sudan.
Daesh commander for Iraq killed, premier says
DUBAI: Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani said on Tuesday that Daesh’s commander for Iraq had been killed in an operation in the Hamrin Mountains in northeast Iraq.
Tunisia’s Kais Saied inaugurated as president for a second term
- His re-election comes after a turbulent first term during which he suspended the country’s parliament, rewrote its post-Arab Spring constitution and jailed dozens of his critics
TUNIS: Tunisia’s President Kais Saied has been inaugurated for a second term, following a monthslong crackdown and string of arrests against his political opponents.
Weeks after winning re-election with a 90.7 percent share of the vote, the 66-year-old former law professor in his inauguration speech Monday called for a “cultural revolution” to combat unemployment, fight terrorism and root out corruption.
“The aim is to build a country where everyone can live in dignity,” Saied said in a speech addressing members of Tunisia’s parliament.
Saied’s Oct. 7 re-election came after a turbulent first term during which he suspended the country’s parliament, rewrote its post-Arab Spring constitution and jailed dozens of his critics in politics, media, business and civil society. He has justified elements of the crackdown as necessary to fight corruption and enemies of the state, using populism to appeal to Tunisians disillusioned with the direction that those who preceded him took the country after nationwide protests led to the 2011 ouster of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
He promised to target the “thieves and traitors on the payroll of foreigners” and blamed “counterrevolutionary forces” for obstructing his efforts to buoy Tunisia’s struggling economy throughout his first term in office.
“The task was not easy. The dangers were great,” he said. “The arms of the old regime were like vipers circulating everywhere. We could hear them hissing, even if we couldn’t see them.”
Though Saied proclaimed a commitment to respecting freedoms, many journalists were prevented from covering his swearing-in on Monday, leading to a rebuke from the National Syndicate of Tunisian Journalists, which expressed “its firm condemnation of the ongoing blackout policy and restrictions on journalistic work” in a news release on Monday.
UN agency head calls for temporary truce in northern Gaza
- “People just waiting to die” — agency chief
- More than 20 killed in latest strikes
GAZA: The United Nations Palestinian refugee agency called on Tuesday for a temporary truce to allow people to leave areas of northern Gaza as health officials said they were running out of supplies to treat patients hurt in a three-week-old Israeli offensive.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UNRWA relief agency, said the humanitarian situation had reached a dire point, with bodies abandoned by roadsides or buried under rubble.
“In northern Gaza, people are just waiting to die,” he said in a statement on social media platform X. “They feel deserted, hopeless and alone.”
“I am calling for an immediate truce, even if for a few hours, to enable safe humanitarian passage for families who wish to leave the area & reach safer places,” he said.
The call came as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Israel looking for ways of reviving attempts to reach a ceasefire in Gaza, following the death of former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar almost a week ago.
Washington has called on Israel to allow more humanitarian supplies into northern Gaza and Israel says it has allowed scores of aid trucks in as well as facilitating air drops but Palestinian health officials say no aid has reached them and the situation is extremely difficult.
On Tuesday, health officials said more than 20 people had been killed by Israeli forces.
Palestinian health officials and the civil emergency service said dozens of bodies of people killed by Israeli fire were scattered on roads and under rubble. Rescue teams could not reach them because of ongoing strikes, they said.
“Many wounded have died before our eyes and we couldn’t do anything for them,” said Munir Al-Bursh, the director of the Gaza health ministry, who is currently in northern Gaza.
“Hospitals also ran out of coffins to prepare the dead and we have asked people to donate any fabric they have at home,” he said in a statement.
The Israeli military, which launched an offensive against Hamas militants holding out in the nearby town of Jabalia this month, says it is evacuating people along designated routes and has filtered out dozens of militants from civilians going south.
Israeli drones circled overhead calling on Palestinians to evacuate areas around the town of Beit Lahiya, close to the border line where an offensive that started around the nearby area of Jabalia to the south began earlier this month.
Many Palestinians fear the evacuation of northern towns is part of an Israeli plan to clear the area of its population to create a buffer zone that will enable Israel to control Gaza after the war.
The military denies the evacuations are part of any wider plan, saying it is moving people to separate them from Hamas fighters but the wider strategic picture remains unclear since the death of Sinwar removed one of Israel’s main obstacles.
It said troops had dismantled tunnels and other infrastructure in Beit Lahiya and local people said fighting appeared to be confined to hit-and-run attacks by small groups of Hamas militants, “not actual fighting or equal combat,” one Palestinian in the area said via WhatsApp.
The armed wings of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad said they have attacked forces with anti-tank rockets and mortar fire.
The death toll in Israel’s operation in Gaza is approaching 43,000, according to the latest health ministry figures issued on Tuesday and the enclave lies in ruins, with most of the 2.3 million population displaced, many in makeshift shelters.
The Israeli operation was triggered by the attack by Hamas-led gunmen who rampaged through communities around the Gaza Strip on Oct, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 as hostages into Gaza.
War knocked human development in Gaza back to 1955, UNDP says
- The UNDP said that by some measures the region’s poverty level was now approaching 100 percent as a result of the disruption
BERLIN: The war in Gaza has devastated the Palestinian economy, which is now 35 percent smaller than it was at the start of Israel’s invasion a year ago, while development levels in Gaza itself have collapsed to the level of the 1950s, the UN’s development agency said.
Launching a new study on the socioeconomic impacts of the war, which Palestinian officials say has claimed more than 42,500 lives, the UNDP’s Chitose Noguchi said that by some measures the region’s poverty level was now approaching 100 percent as a result of the disruption, with unemployment now at 80 percent.
“The state of Palestine is experiencing unprecedented levels of setbacks,” she said over a crackling line from Deir Al-Balah. “For Gaza, reversing development by an estimated 70 years to 1955.”
