Gaza Economy at 13 Percent of Pre-Genocide Level, With Worst Collapse on Record

Israel’s genocide has destroyed nearly 90 percent of Gaza’s economy, causing the worst economic collapse ever recorded, according to the UN.

In 2024 alone, Israel caused Gaza’s GDP to decline by 83 percent, according to data reported Tuesday by the UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) agency. Now, Gaza’s economy stands at just 13 percent of its 2022 levels, UN experts say.

“Gaza is going through the fastest and most damaging economic collapse ever recorded,” said UNCTAD’s deputy secretary general, Pedro Manuel Moreno, at the launch of the report.

The report notes that 70 percent of Gaza’s infrastructure has been destroyed in Israel’s bombardments, amounting to more than 174,500 structures. This damage has “reversed decades of socioeconomic progress” in Gaza, the report notes.

The all-encompassing losses have pushed the economy to “near-total collapse,” the agency notes. Rebuilding Gaza would cost more than $70 billion, and it would take decades to return to pre-genocide levels even if the global community mobilized immediately to begin reconstruction.

“Gaza’s economy has lost 87 per cent of its value since 2022,” said Mutasim Elagraa, UNCTAD economist and coordinator for Palestine within the agency, per UN News. “GDP per capita has reverted to levels seen 22 years ago. This is the worst economic crisis on record, anywhere in recent decades.”

Nobody has been spared by the collapse, especially as Israel blocks the flow of currency in and out of the territory, leaving even those still employed desperate for funds and reliant on the humanitarian aid system that Israel has also systematically dismantled. By 2024, unemployment reached 80 percent, the group found.

Gaza’s GDP per capita has fallen from a high of $2,500 in 2005 to just $161 in 2024 — one of the lowest levels in the world, the agency found.

“Multidimensional poverty now engulfs all Gazans,” Elagraa said.

This collapse comes on top of the fact that Gaza already had one of the weakest economies in the world due to Israel’s air, land, and sea blockade that it maintained for decades prior to the genocide. In 2020, UNCTAD estimated that Israeli occupation sapped $16.7 billion from Gaza between 2007 and 2018, plunging over half the population into poverty and resulting in “near-collapse” of the economy.

UNCTAD now advocates for a universal basic income for the population of Gaza in order to help the economy recover.

The report also noted that Israel’s settlement expansion and increased restrictions on movement in the occupied West Bank has caused severe declines in the economy there. The GDP in the West Bank fell by 17 percent in 2024, “its worst contraction ever recorded,” the UN reported.

Meanwhile, Israel has built an economy on the genocide, with Israeli companies and other corporations making profits off of Israel’s destruction. It could be poised to earn even more under the U.S.’s colonial land grab plan that could cede much of Gaza to Israeli control indefinitely, with President Donald Trump having openly fantasized about turning Gaza into a “riviera” tourist resort.