More than half of the buildings in the Gaza Strip have been damaged or completely destroyed and the tiny Palestinian enclave is now “uninhabitable” after nearly four months of Israel’s war against Hamas, the UN said on Wednesday.

Tens of billions of dollars will need to be spent to make the narrow strip of land viable again, stresses a preliminary report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (CNUCED in French, UNCTAD in English).

Agency researchers assessed the extent of the devastation based mostly on high-resolution satellite photos, comparing images from before Oct. 7 with those after — after Israel began pounding the Gaza Strip relentlessly in retaliation for Hamas’ unprecedented offensive on his territory.

Data collection for the report stopped at the end of November, about two months after the conflict broke out.

By then, 37,379 buildings—or roughly 18% of the total in the Gaza Strip—had been damaged or completely destroyed by the military operation.

Since then, satellite photos reveal that the devastation has more than doubled, Rami Alaze, a CNUCED economist specializing in aid to the Palestinians and one of the report’s authors, told AFP.

“New data shows that 50% of building structures in the Gaza Strip have been (damaged or) destroyed (completely),” he said.

“The Gaza Strip is currently uninhabitable,” the economist underlined.

Shrinking GDP by a quarter

The war was sparked by an unprecedented attack by Hamas on southern sectors of Israeli territory on October 7, when some 1,140 people, mostly civilians, were killed, according to an AFP tally based on official statements from the authorities.

About 250 other people were abducted and taken to the Gaza Strip. More than a hundred were released when a week-long truce was declared in late November. According to Israeli authorities, 132 still remain in the Palestinian enclave, but 29 are believed to be dead.

In retaliation for the Oct. 7 attack, Israel vowed to “wipe out” the Palestinian Islamist movement in power in the Gaza Strip since 2007, and its military operations have since killed at least 26,900 people, the vast majority of them women and children, according to with the Hamas Health Ministry.

CNUCED recalls that the situation in the Gaza Strip was already catastrophic before the war even broke out, as its seventeen-year blockade and repeated military operations resulted in about 80% of the population being dependent on international aid.

Based on satellite imagery and official data, the UN agency estimates that the Gaza Strip’s economy had already contracted by 4.5% in the first three quarters of 2023.

“The military operation markedly accelerated the recession and caused GDP to shrink by 24% and GDP per capita by 26.1% for the year as a whole,” it says in the press release accompanying its report.

Mr Alaze pointed out that the decline in GDP per capita last year is roughly equal to that seen throughout the blockade and during six previous military operations.

45% of the working population in the Palestinian enclave was unemployed before 7 October and the war has sent the unemployment rate skyrocketing, estimated to have reached around 80% in December.

“The entire economy in the Gaza Strip has been paralyzed,” explained Mr. Alazeh, clarifying that the only people working are those participating in humanitarian activities.

Tens of billions

CNUCED estimates that even if reconstruction began immediately and the Gaza Strip returned to the 0.4% average growth rate seen over the past fifteen years, it would take seven decades before the enclave would again achieve its pitiful level of GDP in 2022 .

Huge international aid will be required, the economist explains, especially if the goal is to improve the level of development in the Gaza Strip.

“There is no doubt that it should amount to several tens of billions of dollars” and this is a “conservative estimate”, according to the report.

For the UN agency, any resolution to the crisis must include an end to military operations, the lifting of the blockade and progress towards a two-state solution.

The goal, he explains, cannot simply be “to return to the status quo before October 2023.”