320 thousand Palestinian households under poverty line

PA Minister of Labor, Mamoun Abu Shahla has expressed serious concerns over the dire Palestinian economic situation in a meeting with the World Bank’s manager in the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza.

The Palestinian official has lamented that the Israeli policies have pushed the economy to the brink, adding the number of the jobless has crossed 400 thousand in Palestine.

Over 320 thousand Palestinian households live under the poverty line, according to him.

The meeting came following a UN report in September that said the economy of the occupied Palestinian territories would be at least twice as large if the 49-year-old Israeli occupation was lifted.

“Occupation imposes a heavy cost on the economy of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which might otherwise reach twice its current size,” read the report released by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) on Tuesday.

The report underlined Israeli “restrictions on the movement of people and goods; systematic erosion and destruction of the productive base; losses of land, water and other natural resources”, as some of the main factors hindering the territories’ ability to thrive.