TEHRAN – A new UN report warns Gaza’s destruction has pushed its society and economy to the brink, leaving recovery painfully distant.

The Israeli regime’s genocidal campaign has produced a level of devastation that UN researchers describe as a “human-made abyss,” with economic damage so extensive that rebuilding could exceed $70bn and stretch across generations. 

The UN Trade and Development’s (UNCTAD) assessment portrays a territory stripped of the basic elements required to function: productive sectors have collapsed, infrastructure is shattered and households face escalating deprivation.

The report concludes that every mechanism sustaining daily life has been sharply weakened. Gaza’s economy has contracted by more than 80% in just two years, wiping out decades of gains and driving GDP per capita down to $161, one of the lowest figures anywhere. 

With unemployment reaching over 80% and inflation soaring 238% due to severe restrictions on goods entering the territory, the entire population has been pushed below the poverty line.

Physical damage mirrors the economic collapse. By spring 2025, roughly 70% of buildings had been destroyed or damaged by the occupying Zionist regime. 

Satellite readings show a dramatic drop in night-time luminosity, signaling a near-total halt in economic activity. UN officials estimate that nearly seven decades of human development indicators have been reversed, making this crisis the most extreme recorded in modern conflict-tracking databases.

Humanitarian indicators continue to worsen. The World Food Programme reports that most families in Gaza cannot afford basic staples, relying on limited grains, pulses and small amounts of dairy and oil. Scarcity of cooking gas has forced residents to burn plastic and debris to prepare meals, deepening environmental and health risks.

Experts note that even in the best-case scenario, one involving substantial aid and double-digit growth, Gaza would need several decades to regain pre-October 2023 living standards.

That timeline, they argue, underscores the urgency of a sustained ceasefire and an international recovery plan prioritizing healthcare access, clean water, and restored public infrastructure.

Economic specialists are increasingly advocating for emergency income support, including proposals for a universal basic income to offer Palestinian households some sense of normalcy and prevent further collapse of small and mid-sized businesses. 

Without such measures, the UN warns, Gaza’s ability to rebuild, socially and economically, will remain in jeopardy, leaving millions trapped in a deepening cycle of impoverishment.

It underscores the scale of devastation by the Israeli regime’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, a campaign backed politically, financially and militarily by key Western states, most notably the United States. 

The figures presented by the UN illustrate not only the physical destruction of a densely populated territory, but also the systematic collapse of its economic and social foundations. When an entire population is pushed below the poverty line, when infrastructure is reduced to rubble and when decades of development vanish in less than two years, the crisis can no longer be understood as incidental wartime damage. 

Instead, it reflects a deliberate pattern of policies and actions that have dismantled nearly every pillar of civilian survival. The report’s scale of loss, from the erasure of 69 years of human development to the near-total shutdown of economic activity, reveals the far-reaching consequences of sustained external support for such a genocide, and raises urgent questions about international responsibility in the face of what has become a historic humanitarian and economic catastrophe.