March 20, 2024 (EIRNS)—The report just issued by the UN’s International Labor Organization (ILO) and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) indicates how urgently LaRouche’s Oasis Plan is needed in the region as a crash program to address the destruction of physical infrastructure and the slaughter of the labor force so that the word “employment” can mean something again.
As one indicator, the report states that 507,000 jobs have been lost across the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) as of the end of January. As of Jan. 31, some 201,000 jobs were lost in the Gaza Strip (two-thirds of total employment) and 306,000 jobs lost in the West Bank. Based on this, if hostilities continue through to the end of March, the annual unemployment for all of 2024 will reach 42.7%; if they continue for a second quarter, until the end of June, it will be 45.5%. And, at the current quarterly level, the continuation of the conflict until the end of March will see the unemployment rate rise to a staggering 57% for the first three months of 2024.
