world news
War knocked human development in Gaza back to 1955, UNDP says
The war between Israel and Hamas has devastated the Palestinian economy and left nearly all of Gaza’s population in poverty, with quality of life indicators such as health and education knocked back 70 years, the United Nations’ development agency said on Tuesday.
Launching a study on the war’s socioeconomic impacts, the UNDP’s Chitose Noguchi said the economy of the Palestinian territories – the Gaza Strip and the Israeli-occupied West Bank – was now 35% smaller than it was at the start of Israel’s invasion of Gaza a year ago.
By some measures the poverty level in Gaza was now approaching 100% as a result of the disruption, with unemployment now at 80%, Noguchi said.
“The state of Palestine is experiencing unprecedented levels of setbacks,” she told a UN press conference in Geneva over a sometimes crackling line from Deir Al-Balah. “For Gaza, reversing development by an estimated 70 years to 1955.”Even under optimal conditions, with international aid remaining at current levels and flowing into Gaza and the West Bank unhindered, it would still take at least a decade for economic output to recover to pre-war levels, she said.
The war, launched by Israel after attacks by Hamas on Israeli territory on October 7 last year that killed about 1,200 people, has brought immense destruction to the Gaza Strip.
Schools, hospitals and other essential infrastructure have been razed to the ground. Nearly 43,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to Hamas-run health ministry figures.
Some 3.3 million Palestinians, 2.3 million of them in Gaza and 1.5 million of them children, need urgent humanitarian assistance, the report said.
The cost of repairing damaged infrastructure was expected to run to $18.5 billion, almost the entire annual economic output of the Palestinian territories in 2022.
The war had taken a similarly severe toll on human capital, the report added, with 625,000 students in Gaza having no access to education at the end of September and 93% of school buildings severely damaged.
The situation was similar with regard to healthcare. A total of 986 health workers had been killed by the end of September, and less than half of primary healthcare centers were even partially functional.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Egypt’s foreign minister on Tuesday it was important to ensure Hamas terrorists can never govern Gaza again, the State Department said, with their call coming after President Donald Trump suggested Egypt and Jordan should take more Palestinians.
Trump on Saturday floated a plan to “clean out” Gaza, where Israel’s war has killed tens of thousands and caused a humanitarian crisis, in comments that echoed long-standing Palestinian fears of being permanently driven from their homes.
The suggestion by Trump was not mentioned in the US State Department statement released on Tuesday after the call between Rubio and Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty.
Jordan and Egypt had pushed back over the weekend after Trump’s comments that they should take in Palestinians from Gaza. Asked if this was a temporary or long-term solution, Trump had said: “Could be either.”“He (Rubio) also reinforced the importance of holding Hamas accountable,” the State Department said after Tuesday’s call.
“The Secretary reiterated the importance of close cooperation to advance post-conflict planning to ensure Hamas can never govern Gaza or threaten Israel again.”
Context
Rubio held a call a day earlier with Jordan’s King Abdullah, and the US statement after that call, too, did not mention Trump’s remarks on Palestinian displacement.
The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on Oct. 7, 2023, when Palestinian Hamas terrorists attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
An Israeli aircraft attacked in the Tulkarm area as part of an IDF and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) joint operation, the military announced on Monday.
Later reports in Israeli media clarified that the airstrike occurred in the Nur a-Shams refugee camp.
Footage from the scene indicates that a car was destroyed, leading to an explosive fire with a pillar of smoke rising into the sky.
Two Palestinians were in the vehicle at the time of the airstrike, according to Palestinians quoted in Israeli media.The Palestinian Health Ministry reported that one of the passengers was killed and the other was moderately injured, according to Israeli media reports.
Wider context
This comes amid the IDF’s Operation Iron Wall, aiming to remove Palestinian terrorists from Jenin and the wider area.
The IDF began a wide-ranging operation on Palestinian terror in Jenin last Tuesday, killing several terrorists in the mission meant to last a minimum of several days and potentially much longer.
The campaign, dubbed “Operation Iron Wall,” includes drones and helicopter air support. There were also reportedly tanks in the vicinity – although not entering Jenin – and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), Duvdevan, Egoz, other special forces, and engineering forces from Battalion 90 were all involved.
The Committee to Project Journalists (CPJ) stated that China, Israel, and Myanmar are the “world’s three worst offenders” for imprisoning journalists in 2024, according to a report published by the organization on Thursday.
The report stated that while other egregious offenders, such as China, Myanmar, Belarus, and Russia, “routinely rank among the top jailers of journalists,” Israel rarely appeared in CPJ censuses before the October 7 massacre.
According to the report, Israel rose to second place as it “tried to silence coverage from the occupied Palestinian territories,” adding that “all detained by Israel on the day of CPJ’s census are Palestinian.” The CPJ report claims that 43 Palestinian journalists were held in Israeli custody as of December 1, 2024.
The report did not take into account that Israel has regularly discovered journalists either embedded with Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists, linked alleged journalists directly as members of terror groups, or killed terrorists whose journalistic ties are later revealed.However, the report did not focus exclusively on Israel but rather on the general increase of authoritarian arrests of journalists across the world, criticizing the authorities in China, Myanmar, Russia, and Belarus, respectively, to an equal extent.
“At least 10 journalists” are held in administrative detention centers where prisoners are subjected to “inhuman conditions,” the report added.
Lawyers who visited some of the detainees told CPJ that Israeli authorities informed the journalists that they were arrested because they had contacted individuals whom Israel wanted information about.
Such arrests are “symptomatic of Israel’s broader effort to prevent coverage of its actions in Gaza,” according to the report. CPJ also reported that Israel banned foreign correspondents from entering Gaza and banned Al Jazeera.
Other CPJ reports discussing Israel
CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna was quoted in a report titled Attacks, arrests, threats, censorship: The high risks of reporting the Israel-Gaza war that “Journalists have been paying the highest price – their lives – for their reporting” since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
CPJ stated in the report that IDF spokespeople repeatedly tell media outlets that IDF policy does not deliberately target journalists and added that IDF reportedly told news agencies that they cannot guarantee the safety of journalists.
A separate January 17 report by CPJ stated that the journalists’ attorneys claimed their arrests by Israel were in retaliation for their journalism and commentary.
The January 17 report notes that 30 journalists, including three held by the Palestinian Authority, have been released since their arrests over the last 15 months.
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