Gaza’s economic losses exceeded $300 million in 2018 as a result of Israel’s stifling siege on the Strip, head of the Popular Committee Against the Siege Jamal Al-Khodari said yesterday.
In a statement Al-Khodari described 2018 as “the most disastrous year” for Gaza since it was occupied by the Israeli occupation in 1967.
Al-Khodari said in the statement:
“Gaza experiences unprecedented disastrous economic situation […] due to the 12-year strict Israeli siege and the three destructive Israeli offensives.”
2018 is almost over.
This year, Israeli snipers shot & injured 6,174 Palestinian protesters in the occupied Gaza Strip with live fire (via @WHO, 17 December).
The Israeli army boasted every shot was calculated & recorded.
There has been zero accountability.#GreatReturnMarch pic.twitter.com/n8u7wvtGn1
— Ben White (@benabyad) December 31, 2018
He added:
“The continuous and systematic Israeli siege aimed to hurt the national economy.”
According to Al-Khodari, the Israeli occupation is still banning hundreds of basic commodities from entering Gaza, causing up to 90 percent of Gaza’s factories to stop working.
He stated that there are around 300,000 unemployed workers in Gaza, in addition to tens of thousands of unemployed university graduates.
Of 290 Palestinians killed by #Israel in 2018, most were civilian #Gaza protesters. One of those was Rouzan al-Nijar, a 20 year old medic shot by a still unpunished Israeli sniper despite that she and other nearby protesters had posed no threat or violencehttps://t.co/86jvavA4ci
— Charles Shoebridge (@ShoebridgeC) December 31, 2018
He said in the statement:
“The unemployment rate in Gaza is over 65 percent … Income of more than 85 percent of Gaza residents has declined to less than $2 a day.”
He called for the international bodies and the international community to put pressure on the Israeli occupation in order to meet its obligations under the Geneva Convention and the Global Declaration of Human Rights, which criminalize the siege and collective punishment.
(MEMO, PC, Social Media)
