Elham Asaad Buaras
The Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territories is estimated to have cost the Palestinian economy $47.7 billion in the last decade, three times the size of its 2017 economy, according to a United Nations report.
“In the last decade, several UNCTAD [UN Conference on Trade and Development] studies and reports have addressed the Palestinian fiscal leakage to Israel,” said Mutasim Elagraa, a UNCTAD economist, at the report launch in Geneva, Switzerland.
The report entitled Economic Cost of the Israeli Occupation for the Palestinian People: Fiscal Aspects was presented to the UN General Assembly on December 3.
“This fiscal leakage prompted other international organisations to bring this issue into question, which helped in retroactively retrieving part of the fiscal resources of the Palestinian National Authority from Israel,” he said.
The estimate comprises lost public revenues and interest payments.
According to the report, it includes $28.2 billion in estimated accrued interest and $6.6 billion of leaked Palestinian fiscal revenues to Israel, and the amount continues to rise.
“This estimated cumulative fiscal cost of occupation by Israel would not only have eliminated the Palestinian budget deficit estimated at 17.7 billion US dollars during the same period. It would have also generated a surplus nearly twice the size of the deficit,” Elagraa said.
Alternatively, it would have increased more than tenfold the Palestinian Government’s development spending, pegged at $4.5 billion during the period under review, according to the report.
Economic cost of the Israeli occupation for the Palestinian people: Fiscal aspects