Gaza - Israel has decimated Gaza's economy, shrinking it to less than one-sixth of its 2022 level, amid an "alarming decline" in the West Bank, the UN said Thursday.

More than 11 months into Israel's siege of the Gaza Strip, the United Nations said economic devastation has taken place at a "staggering scale."

Israel has killed at least 41,020 people in Gaza, according to the territory's health ministry, although the actual number of casualties is feared to be far higher. The UN rights office says most of the dead are women and children.

In addition to the devastating human toll, the UN Trade and Development agency (UNCTAD) pointed in a new report to the dramatic impact of Israeli violence on the economies in both Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

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By early 2024, it said, up to 96% of Gaza's agricultural assets, including farms, orchards, irrigation systems, machinery, and storage facilities, had been "decimated."

This, it pointed out, had crippled food production capacity and worsened the already towering levels of food insecurity in the besieged Palestinian territory.

A full 82% of businesses in Gaza had also been damaged or destroyed.

In the last quarter of 2023 alone, Gaza's gross domestic product (GDP) plummeted 81%, leading to a 22% contraction for the entire year, the report found.

"By mid-2024, Gaza's economy had shrunk to less than one-sixth of its 2022 level," UNCTAD said.

Surging Israeli military and settler attacks in the West Bank, meanwhile, have sparked a "rapid and alarming economic decline" there as well, the agency warned.

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Since October 7, Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 662 Palestinians in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

At least 23 Israelis, including members of the security forces, have been killed in Palestinian attacks during the same period, Israeli officials say.

Thursday's report said factors like illegal settlement expansions, land confiscation, demolition of Palestinian structures, increased settler violence, and a growing number of checkpoints had displaced West Bank communities and severely impacted economic activities.

A full 80% of businesses in East Jerusalem Old City have either partially or completely ceased operations, UNCTAD said.

The report pointed out that there had initially been optimism for the West Bank economy in 2023, with 4% GDP growth registered in the first three quarters.

But that was abruptly reversed after October 7, with a 19% contraction in the final quarter, resulting in an annual GDP drop of 1.9%, while per capita GDP plunged 4.5%.

At the same time, the Palestinian government's fiscal stability is under "immense pressure," UNCTAD said, pointing among other things to escalating revenue deductions by Israel, which controls two-thirds of Palestinian fiscal income.

The report highlighted that Israel had withheld more than $1.4 billion in Palestinian tax revenues in the past five years – over 8% of Palestinian GDP last year.

Labor market conditions across the Palestinian territories have also worsened dramatically since October 7.

In the West Bank, the report showed that 96% of businesses decreased activity, and over 42% reduced their workforce.

In all, 306,000 jobs have been lost, pushing the West Bank's unemployment rates from nearly 13% before the war to 32%.

In Gaza, meanwhile, a full two-thirds of jobs – around 201,000 positions – had been lost by January this year, the report showed.

Unemployment in the besieged territory reached 79% in the final quarter of 2023, up from 46% in the previous quarter, it said.

Even before Israel launched its genocidal assault, poverty was already widespread.

And now "poverty affects nearly the entire population of Gaza and is rising rapidly in the West Bank," UNCTAD said.