UN: Palestinian economic prospects bleak

Despite Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory's economic growth of 9.3 per cent last year, the expansion was not enough to reduce the area’s 30 per cent unemployment rate.

The United Nations trade and development arm issued a report yesterday which said restrictions on the movement of people and goods to, from or within the West Bank and Gaza have fostered small-scale cost inefficiencies and technological decline. They have also blocked the emergence of an export sector capable of substantial contributions to economic development.

The UN’s Trade and Development Office’s Coordinator of the Assistance to the Palestinian People is Mahmoud Elkhafif.

”In the last year about half of the Palestinians in all of the Palestinian Occupied Territories were affected by food insecurity,” he said. “The reason for that is about 35 per cent of the farmers in Gaza are not able to access their farms and 85 per cent of the maritime space available to Palestinian fishermen are no longer available. The Palestinian people to cope with this poverty they have a number of coping strategies, they are running down on their savings, they are selling their jewellery and furniture and so on and may be not sending their children to school.”


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