The Gaza Strip may already be "unlivable", a United Nations official warned Tuesday, after a decade of Hamas rule.
Robert Piper, the UN's top humanitarian official in the Palestinian territories, told AFP in an interview to mark a new report on living conditions in Gaza all the "indicators are going in the wrong direction". "We predicted some years ago that Gaza would fast become unlivable on a host of indicators and that deadline is actually approaching even faster than we predicted -- from health access, to energy to water," he said.
A 2012 UN report predicted the Palestinian enclave would be "unlivable" by 2020 if nothing was done to ease the blockade. Piper pointed out that power supplies were down to as little as two hours a day in Gaza, where medical care had been slashed and youth unemployment was over 60 percent.
In such circumstances "for most of us that unlivability point has already been passed", he said.
Since 2013 Egypt, the only other country besides Israel with which Gaza shares a border, has largely closed off its crossing and destroyed hundreds of smuggling tunnels that allegedly provided a vital lifeline for the economy while also being used by Hamas to smuggle weapons.
The new UN report, "Gaza -- Ten Years Later," says more than 95 percent of Gaza's water is now unfit for drinking, while electricity supplies have
reached critical levels in recent months -- falling to only a few hours a day.