Gaza could soon become 'uninhabitable', UN warns

The United Nations has issued a stark warning that Gaza could become uninhabitable in the next five years if current economic trends continue.

A report released by the UN Conference on Trade and Development says years of economic blockades by the Israeli government and three military operations in the last six years have sparked a process of "de-development" – where development is not just hindered, but reversed.

The conflict last year forced 500,000 residents to flee and destroyed more than 20,000 Palestinian homes, 148 schools and 15 hospitals. The region's power and water supplies remain badly damaged.

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Gaza's economy saw negative economic growth of minus 0.4 per cent and unemployment reached a record 44 per cent last year, due "almost entirely" to a range of "discriminatory" economic policies imposed on it. These include the Israeli government withholding nearly $700m worth of Palestinian clearance revenue, earned from taxes on imports into Gaza.

The war "has effectively eliminated what was left of the middle class, sending almost all of the population into destitution and dependence on international humanitarian aid," the UN reports.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights says that while donor aid has been "very useful" to the Palestinian population, it needed to be paired with "real political policies" to have any lasting effect.

"The humanitarian catastrophe is man-made," deputy director Hamdi Shaqqura told Al Jazeera. "The answer is only through man-made policies."

On the one-year anniversary of the most recent conflict, The Week's Nigel Wilson reported that hope is yet to emerge from the rubble. "The nine-year economic blockade has been made worse by weak governance from within," he wrote.

"An intra-Palestinian dispute between the Palestinian Authority based in Ramallah, and Gaza's Hamas government, has all but stalled reconstruction and development in the coastal enclave since the war last summer."