Ramallah - Saba:
The head of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Ola Awad, reviewed the conditions of the Palestinians at the end of 2024, noting that the population of the Gaza Strip decreased by (6%) by the end of 2024, with the continuation of the brutal Zionist aggression on the Strip, which led, according to figures issued by the Palestinian Ministry of Health, to the martyrdom of 45,484 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, until the end of December 2024, and about 100,000 Palestinians have left the Strip since the beginning of the aggression on October 7, 2023.
In a statement issued by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Awad said among the martyrs, about 17,581 are children, and about 12,048 are women, in addition to about 11,000 missing persons, and about 108,090 other citizens were injured.
In the West Bank, the Zionist enemy continued its aggression; 835 Palestinian citizens were martyred and 6,450 others were injured as a result of attacks by the Zionist enemy forces and settlers.
Based on the above data, the estimated population of the State of Palestine by the end of 2024 is 5.5 million Palestinians (3.4 million in the West Bank) while the estimated population of the Gaza Strip for the year 2024 has decreased by about 160 thousand Palestinians, reaching 2.1 million (a decrease of 6% compared to the population estimates for the Gaza Strip for the year 2023), including more than one million children under the age of eighteen, constituting 47% of the population of the Strip.
According to figures issued by the Palestinian Ministry of Health, there are about 60,000 pregnant women at risk due to the lack of health care in the Gaza Strip, and 13,649 pregnant women are expected to give birth during the next month, with 5,522 women in the Gaza Strip and 8,127 women in the West Bank. In addition, 155,000 pregnant and lactating women face difficult challenges in accessing and obtaining prenatal and postnatal health care services.
In addition, 96% of the population in the Gaza Strip (2.1 million people) They face high levels of acute food insecurity until September 2024, including about 49,300 pregnant women, and more than 495,000 people (22% of the population) face catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity (Phase 5), including 11,000 pregnant women, and about 3,500 children are at risk of death due to malnutrition and food shortages, as 36 children were killed as a result of famine and malnutrition.
Due to the aggression, education has become an unavailable luxury, and with every shell that explodes, the human right to a normal life in the Gaza Strip collapses.
The aggression led to the collapse of the economic system in the Gaza Strip, a sharp contraction in the productive base of the West Bank, and an unprecedented rise in unemployment rates:
Palestine is suffering from a social, humanitarian, environmental, and economic catastrophe that has led to the contraction of the productive base and the distortion of the economic structure of Palestine, as the contribution of the Gaza Strip to the total Palestinian economy has declined to less than 5%, after representing about 17% before October 7, 2023.
After a year of the Zionist aggression on the Gaza Strip and its repercussions on the West Bank, initial estimates indicate a contraction of the gross domestic product in the Gaza Strip by more than 85%, and about 22% in the West Bank, so that the Palestinian economy has declined by a third compared to what it was before October 7, 2023.
The unemployment rate has also risen to 80% in the Gaza Strip and 35% in the West Bank, raising the unemployment rate in Palestine to 51%.
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