The United Nations has some bad news. The Gaza Strip’s fragile economy has been so catastrophically disrupted by the war its governing authority started on October 7 that it will take no fewer than 350 years for this tiny plot of land to recover. An editor of the Guardian reproduced the accusation, and his colleagues published his thoughts on the matter apparently without evincing any skepticism toward the claim.
The assessment is a pristine example of why straight-line projections are inherently fallacious. The U.N. report that produced this dubious conclusion notes that almost all economic activity in sectors including agriculture, manufacturing, and services has ground nearly to a halt — as one might expect amid ongoing counterinsurgency operations. That won’t last forever, and those sectors will start to rebuild and resume their previously profitable operations when Israel’s battlefield objectives are achieved.
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