UN Development Program report: Number of poor people in Palestinian territories has doubled since the start of the year

According to a report published by the United Nations Development Program, the number of residents of the Palestinian territories living below the poverty line has doubled since the beginning of 2024, reaching 73.4% of the total population of the territories.

“This was a direct consequence of the war. War not only destroys infrastructure. It brings poverty, loss of livelihoods. From a socio-economic point of view, Palestine has been set back for years, if not decades,” says agency head Achim Steiner.

It is also noted that unemployment has reached 49.9% in the Palestinian territories. If not for the war, the report’s authors say, it would have been only 14.8%. The UN Development Program estimates the amount of debris generated as a result of Israeli attacks on Gaza at 42 million tons.

At the same time, the mathematics, as cited by the Arab News website, is poor for the authors of the report. They claim that the number of people living below the poverty level has doubled. At the same time, there are now 4.1 million poor Palestinians, and their increase since the beginning of 2024 amounted to 2.61 million people.