NEW YORK: Israel’s attacks on Gaza and its broader financial control across the Occupied Territories have triggered a severe economic emergency, UN independent experts warned on Monday, calling for an immediate end to measures that are causing “catastrophic harm” to human rights.
“Economic life in Gaza has been decimated by sheer physical destruction, blockade and siege, and repeated forced displacement,” they said in a statement, citing widespread damage to commercial, agricultural and industrial infrastructure in the Palestinian enclave, with unemployment surging above 80 percent, a sharp contraction in gross domestic product, halted trade and endemic poverty. Famine has already been declared.
They said a liquidity crisis across Gaza has been exacerbated by the destruction of banks and ATMs, and Israel’s blocking of new currency inflows.
The scarcity of cash has triggered hyperinflation, with the price of cooking oil increasing by 1,200 percent and flour by 5,000 percent by mid-2025.
Humanitarian workers are losing nearly 40 percent of their salaries just to access cash, while digital payments are frequently disrupted by electricity and telecommunications outages.
