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<div class="artsource ">OnIslam &amp; News Agencies|Wednesday, 15 June 2011 09:19</div>
<div class="artmainimage "><a class="modal" title="Gaza, unemployment, UN" href="http://www.onislam.net/english/oimedia/onislamen/images/mainimages/Jobless%20Gaza.jpg" rel="{handler: 'image'}"><img title="Gaza, unemployment, UN" src="https://i1.wp.com/www.onislam.net/english/oimedia/onislamen/images/mainimages/Jobless%20Gaza.jpg" alt="Gaza, unemployment, UN" width="300" height="220" /></a></p>
<div class="caption"><em>The report found that unemployment rates in Gaza reached 45.2%. </em></div>
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<p>GAZA CITY – Five years under a crippling Israeli blockade, the impoverished Gaza Strip is suffering one of the world&#8217;s highest unemployment rates, a UN report has revealed.</p>
<p>&#8220;These are disturbing trends,&#8221; Chris Gunnes, spokesman of the UN refugees agency UNRWA, said, according to Ma&#8217;an news agency.</p>
<p>&#8220;And the refugees, which make up two thirds of Gaza’s 1.5 million population were the worst hit in the period covered in this report.&#8221;</p>
<p>The report found that unemployment rates in Gaza, home to 1.6 million Palestinians, reached 45.2%.</p>
<p>It also found that real wages had fallen 34.5 percent since the first half of 2006, when Israel blockaded the impoverished enclave after Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections.</p>
<p>&#8220;It is hard to understand the logic of a man-made policy which deliberately impoverishes so many and condemns hundreds of thousands of potentially productive people to a life of destitution,&#8221; Gunness said.</p>
<p>Israel has clamped a severe blockade on Gaza since Hamas was voted to power in Gaza in 2006 and the capture of an Israeli soldier in a cross-border raid.</p>
<p>The siege was further tightened after Hamas seized control of the strip in 2007, shutting all Gaza&#8217;s crossings.</p>
<p>In 2008, Israel launched a three-week deadly assault in Gaza, killing more than 1,400 people and injured thousands.</p>
<p>The offensive wrecked havoc on the infrastructure of the densely-populated enclave, leaving tens of thousands of homes and other buildings in ruins.</p>
<p>Following the ouster of Egypt&#8217;s president Hosni Mubarak, Cairo has decided to open the Rafah crossing, Gaza&#8217;s only gateway to the outside world, to help ease the siege on the Gazans.</p>
<p><strong>Israeli Failure</strong></p>
<p>The UN report said that the crippling Israeli siege has failed to weaken the Hamas government in Gaza.</p>
<p>&#8220;If the aim of the blockade policy was to weaken the Hamas administration, the public employment numbers suggest this has failed,&#8221; said Gunness.</p>
<p>&#8220;Our research indicates that since 2007, Hamas has been able to increase public employment by about one fifth.&#8221;</p>
<p>The UNRWA report found that the Israeli blockade has caused the private sector jobs to disappear.</p>
<p>While private businesses were forced to cut nearly 8,000 jobs in the second half of 2010, the Hamas-dominated public sector grew by nearly 3% over the same period.</p>
<p>&#8220;Even more striking, in what should have been a relatively good year for the Gaza private sector with the supposed easing of the blockade, the public sector generated 70% of all net job growth as between second-half 2009 and second-half 2010.&#8221;</p>
<p>UNRWA, however, said that the number of &#8220;abject poor&#8221; it was assisting, those earning less than $1.60 a day, had tripled to 300,000 people since the Israeli siege was imposed.</p>
<p>UNRWA accused Israel of pursuing a policy of collective punishment against Gaza population.</p>
<p>&#8220;But it has certainly been highly successful in punishing some of the poorest of the poor in the Middle East region.&#8221;</p>
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<h5>Related Links:</h5>
<p><a href="http://www.onislam.net/english/news/africa/452056-egypt-to-open-gaza-crossing-permanently.html">Egypt to Open Gaza Crossing Permanently</a><br />
<a href="http://www.onislam.net/english/news/middle-east/426747.html">Israel&#8217;s Gaza &#8220;Terror&#8221;</a><br />
<a href="http://www.onislam.net/english/news/middle-east/422037.html">Grieving Gaza Doctor Nominated for Nobel</a><br />
<a href="http://www.onislam.net/english/news/middle-east/451714-un-retraction-paves-way-for-new-gaza-war.html">UN Retraction Paves Way for New Gaza War</a><br />
<a href="http://www.onislam.net/english/news/middle-east/448931-power-outage-spoils-gaza-ramadan.html">Power Outage Spoils Gaza Ramadan</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.onislam.net/english/news/middle-east/452667-jobless-gaza.html">Source</a></p>
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