UN Warns Gaza’s Society ‘Hanging by a Thread’ After 87% Economic Collapse
UN warns Gaza faces decades of ruin after total economic meltdown.
United Nations declared that Gaza’s very existence as a functioning society is now hanging by a thread after Israel’s two-year war triggered an unprecedented 87% economic collapse. The UN Trade and Development agency (UNCTAD) warned that every single pillar of survival—food, water, healthcare, shelter, and jobs—has been systematically obliterated, plunging 2.3 million Palestinians into what it called a “human-made abyss” with no end in sight.
Rebuilding Gaza alone will cost over $70 billion and take several decades even under the most optimistic scenarios, the report revealed, with per capita GDP crashing to a shocking $161—one of the lowest figures on Earth. Entire neighbourhoods have been flattened, factories bombed to rubble, and farmland rendered unusable by unexploded ordnance and contamination. UN experts now openly question whether Gaza can ever reconstitute itself as a liveable space without massive, coordinated global intervention starting immediately.
The destruction didn’t stop at buildings: the war has unleashed cascading crises that are pushing the strip toward total societal and irreversible ruin. More than 69,000 Palestinians have been killed according to Gaza’s health ministry, hospitals operate without electricity or medicine, and the entire population is classified as facing extreme multidimensional poverty. UNCTAD’s stark conclusion: Gaza has moved beyond “de-development” into outright annihilation of its economic and social fabric.
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Desperate for solutions, the agency issued an urgent global call for a comprehensive recovery plan that includes restoring fiscal transfers from Israel and the Palestinian Authority, lifting the 17-year blockade, and launching a universal emergency basic income—unconditional monthly cash payments to every single resident just to keep them alive. Without these measures, even decades of double-digit growth fueled by foreign aid won’t bring Gaza back to its already-dire pre-October 2023 levels.
Meanwhile, the West Bank is also bleeding: violence, settlement expansion, and mobility restrictions have delivered its worst economic crash since records began in 1972. As world leaders debate ceasefires and reconstruction pledges, the UN’s message is brutally clear—Gaza is not just broken; it is on the verge of becoming a place where human survival itself is no longer guaranteed.
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