The numbers coming out of Palestine, and the language we seek to describe what has been happening in Gaza and the West Bank since 7 October, leave most Palestinians numbed. While the scale of physical destruction, human loss and socio-economic crises mount daily, reports by international organisations and NGOs cannot keep up with the count.
The most recent assessment by the World Bank put the cost of the destruction of housing and physical infrastructure at $18.5bn, but this only covered the first months of the war, before it spread south towards Khan Yunis and Rafah. Today, we can only estimate that this toll has already doubled and continues to mount as all areas of the Strip have come within Israeli gunsights. The UN warns of a 40-year setback to Palestinian human development, and that it could take at least 15 years to remove the 40 million tonnes of rubble left in the wake of Israel’s total war. Gaza has lost its annual GDP of around $3bn (its pre-2023 level), 90 per cent of Gazans are living in poverty while 12 months of emergency humanitarian aid have been costed in UN appeals since October at over $3bn. And that’s only for 2024. This is the true picture of Israeli victory.
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