麻豆APP

20 April 2026

Executive Summary:

Context:

Since the large-scale attack on October 7, 2023, by militant groups from the Gaza Strip into Israel, the escalation of conflict in the Gaza Strip has led to an unprecedented loss of life and a catastrophic humanitarian crisis. Over two years of conflict has resulted in more than 71,000 Palestinian fatalities and over 171,000 injured1 , and many are missing under the rubble. The conflict has led to widespread displacement, extensive damage to social, physical, and productive infrastructure, and plunged the strip into a deep humanitarian crisis. The conflict has also killed approximately 1,671 Israeli and foreign nationals, the majority in the October 7, 2023, attacks, alongside significant displacement and damage in Israel.

Over 1.9 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have been internally displaced to locations inside of the Gaza Strip, many of them multiple times over; and over 1.2 million people —almost 60 percent of Gaza Strip’s population—have lost their homes. Extensive damage to water, sanitation, and waste management infrastructure, a lack of critical resources to operate and maintain the remaining infrastructure, and poor hygiene conditions and food insecurity have left the entire population of the Gaza Strip at risk of disease outbreaks.

A ceasefire agreement was reached on October 9, 2025 and a UN Security Council Resolution 2803 (2025), adopted on 17 November, endorsed the Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Strip Conflict, and welcomed the establishment of a “Board of Peace (BoP) as a transitional administration with international legal personality that will set the framework, and coordinate funding for the redevelopment of Gaza pursuant to the Comprehensive Plan, and in a manner consistent with relevant international legal principles, until such time as the Palestinian Authority (PA) has satisfactorily completed its reform program, as outlined in various proposals.” At the time of the drafting of this RDNA, the Board of Peace and its subsidiary entities have been constituted, including the Office of the High Representative, a National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, led by Palestinian Commissioners from Gaza, and a Liaison Office has been established between the Palestinian Authority and the Office of the High Representative. Defining clear roles and mandates for various constituent parts of these arrangements, and how the international community will interact with them will be critical for a successful implementation of recovery efforts. Since the ceasefire, 1,246 Palestinians have been injured and a further 449 have been killed as of mid-January 2026.

This Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment (RDNA), conducted jointly by the World Bank, 麻豆APP (UN), and European Union (EU), aims to inform the stakeholders about the physical, social, economic, and human impacts of the conflict in the Gaza Strip incurred between October 2023 and October 2025. The RDNA provides a technical evidence base for recovery and reconstruction planning focused on immediate needs, as well as guide priorities for medium and long term. It does not assess or propose specific implementation arrangements for recovery. This assessment builds on the interim assessments of April 2024 and February 2025. It is based on globally proven methodologies that combine remote sensing and ground-verified data for calculating damages, losses, and recovery needs, and estimates validated by the EU, UN, and the World Bank. The RDNA should be followed by on-ground sectoral deep-dive assessments to inform sector-level recovery planning.

RDNA scope

Geographical scope: The RDNA covers the entire Gaza Strip, with particular emphasis on detailed assessments of the most severely affected sectors and vulnerable groups in heavily impacted urban and rural areas.

Sectoral scope:?The assessment covers macroeconomic and human impacts, and 17 key sectors, including four cross-cutting areas. The sectors are:

• Social sectors: housing; social protection; health; cultural heritage; education.
• Infrastructure sectors: municipal services; water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH); transport; energy; information and communications technology (ICT).
• Productive sectors: commerce and industry; finance; agriculture and food systems.
• Cross-cutting sectors: governance (with rule of law and access to justice); environment; land; employment.

Temporal scope.

• Damages: Incurred between October 8, 2023, and October 9, 2025.
• Losses: Incurred between the two years of the conflict and projected for up to three years in the future.
• Needs: Early recovery, short-term (up to 18 months), medium term (1.5- 3 yrs) to long-term needs (3-5 years).
• Definitions of these terms are provided in Annex 1, and the methodology, including constraints and limitations, is described in Annex 2.

Key Findings for the Gaza Strip

The conflict in the Gaza Strip has inflicted widespread damage across multiple critical sectors, with each sector facing unique challenges and extensive financial needs for recovery. Table 1 presents the overview of physical damages, economic losses, and recovery requirements across the sectors. Physical damage caused by the conflict is estimated at US$35.2 billion and economic losses at US$22.7 billion, bringing the total estimated effects of the conflict on physical assets to US$57.9 billion. Recovery and reconstruction needs are estimated at around US$71.4 billion.

DAMAGES AND LOSSES

The RDNA estimates that around US$35.2 billion in direct damages have been caused to the physical infrastructure in the Gaza Strip after more than two years of conflict (see Table 1). The housing sector has incurred the highest damages at US$18.0 billion (51 percent of total damages), followed by commerce and industry at US$6.35 billion (18 percent), transport at US$3.2 billion (9 percent), and water and sanitation at US$1.7 billion (5 percent). Geographically, Gaza and North Gaza Governorates have suffered the most damages. Compared to the 2014 and 2021 conflicts, the level of destruction in the Gaza Strip is on a completely different scale.

Around US$22.7 billion of economic losses have been incurred due to the conflict. Given that the economic impact of the conflict on the sectors will continue to be felt until substantial recovery is made, these losses include loss estimates projected up to three years in the future, aligned with sector-specific recovery calendars. The sectors with the highest estimated losses are health with US$6.8 billion (30 percent of total losses), employment with US$2.8 billion (12 percent), commerce and industry with US$2.5 billion (11 percent), education with US$2.4 billion (11 percent), and social protection with US$1.6 billion (seven percent). The effects of the conflict (damages and losses combined) are thus greatest in housing with US$19.1 billion, followed by commerce and industry with US$8.8 billion, health at US$8.2 billion, transport at US$4.4 billion, and education with US$3.4 billion.

RECOVERY AND RECONSTRUCTION NEEDS

The recovery and reconstruction needs across these sectors, estimated at US$71.4 billion, highlight the scale and urgency of restoring essential services, economic stability, and social resilience, while undertaking massive reconstruction of damaged infrastructure. Immediate recovery needs, to be addressed in the first eight months, are estimated to be US$10.8 billion while short-term recovery needs with a focus on restoring critical services (18 months) are estimated at US$15.5 billion . The remaining US$45.1 billion is estimated to address the medium to long-term recovery and reconstruction needs (three – five years).

The highest recovery and reconstruction needs are in the housing sector (US$16.2 billion), followed by agriculture and food system (US$10.5 billion), health (US$10 billion), and commerce and industry (US$9 billion), together accounting for 64% of total reconstruction needs and represent the most urgent priorities. Housing requires immediate action in the first 18 months (US$4.1billion), focused on deploying temporary and transitional shelter, emergency cash assistance, debris clearance, and initiating reconstruction of destroyed units alongside the rollout of resilient building codes. Agriculture and Food Systems carry the single largest short-term financing requirement of any sector (US$ 7.5 billion in the first 18 months), reflecting the urgency of averting food insecurity — encompassing emergency food and nutrition assistance, rapid rehabilitation of productive capacity, and reconstruction of markets and storage facilities. Health requires US$2.6 billion in the first 18 months to restore essential services through temporary and field hospitals, address trauma, mental health and nutrition needs, and rehabilitate primary health centers. Health needs escalate over time, reaching US$4.3 billion in the 3–5-year phase as the focus shifts to completing large-scale infrastructure, modernizing and rationalizing the health network, and institutionalizing shock-responsive systems — making it the sector with the steepest long-term financing curve.

Resuming basic services such as health, WASH, connectivity (telecom and road networks), along with rubble clearance—with particular attention to human remains and unexploded ordnance contamination—are an immediate priority. Addressing food insecurity, social protection needs, housing access issues, resumption of education, and mental health and psychosocial support for populations are also components of early to short-term needs. Removal and management costs for over 68 million metric tonnes of debris are over US$1.7 billion alone.

SOCIAL AND HUMAN IMPACT

The scale and extent of deprivation across living conditions, livelihoods/income, food security, gender equality, and social inclusion, have pushed back human development in the Gaza Strip by 77 years, and the Human Development Index (HDI) is projected to collapse to 0.339 — the lowest level since measurements began.

The escalation of conflict over the last two years has had a catastrophic humanitarian impact. The entire population of the Gaza Strip is experiencing significant, direct, and long-term impacts on their physical health, economic stability, and psychosocial well-being. Nearly 1.9 million people have been displaced, many repeatedly, and over 1.2 million Palestinians in Gaza, about 60 percent of the population, have lost their housing.

Basic services have been severely degraded, disproportionately impacting the most vulnerable. Fewer than half of hospitals and less than 38 per cent of primary healthcare centers remain partially functional. The majority of the existing schools have been repurposed as shelters for internally displaced people (IDP). Extensive damage to water, sanitation and waste management infrastructure, and the lack of critical resources to maintain the remaining infrastructure, have left the entire population at risk of disease outbreaks.

Women and children have borne an immense share of direct and indirect impact of the conflict. Over 40 per cent of pregnant and breastfeeding women are severely malnourished, and two-thirds suffer from anemia. Furthermore, it has been estimated that virtually 100 percent of children require mental health and psychosocial support. 728,000 school-aged children and youth have been out of formal schooling for more than two years, and at least 792 teachers and school personnel have been killed. Formal education for children with disabilities has been almost entirely suspended.

There has been a substantial increase in the number of people with disabilities in the Gaza Strip as a result of the conflict, with a strong impact on the provision of all basic services. As of September 2025, at least 41,844 people are estimated to be living with conflict-related, life-changing injuries requiring long-term rehabilitation, around 25 percent of whom are children, implying that over 10,000 are living with severe disabilities as a direct result of the conflict. Available conservative estimates of amputations are at 5,000– 6,500 cases.

MACROECONOMIC IMPACT

The Gaza economy has incurred unprecedented losses as a consequence of the recent conflict. The loss of life, widespread destruction, and the speed of damage to infrastructure have reached levels among the most severe in the recent history of the MENA region and global episodes of conflict. Bottom-up sector specific assessments estimate total damages to Gaza’s capital stock at US$35.2 billion as of October 9, 2025, the date of the ceasefire agreement.

Economic activity in Gaza was extremely constrained in the last two years, with limited ceasefire-related improvements in 2025 insufficient to reverse widespread economic paralysis. In 2024, economic activity in the Strip nearly came to a complete halt as the economy contracted by a devastating 83 percent, year on-year (y-o-y), in real terms. In 2025, economic activity picked up very modestly during the first and fourth quarters, primarily due to the presence of a ceasefire for much of these periods, although episodes of destruction persisted. This resulted in an estimated increase in Gaza’s real GDP exceeding 30 percent (y-o-y) in 2025, largely reflecting a low base effect after the historic contraction of the previous year, rather than any meaningful recovery in economic activity. Most sectors remained largely inactive through 2025, with only minimal activity observed in wholesale and retail trade as well as a narrow set of public services.

Nearly three-quarters of Gaza’s pre-conflict employed population lost their jobs, resulting in an employment-to-population ratio of 9.3 percent in the Strip. This, and job losses in the West Bank, resulted in a thirteen percentage point decline in the combined ratio for the West Bank and Gaza, positioning it among the lowest in the World Bank database. Over 80 percent of employees in Gaza were unable to work due to extensive workplace destruction, roadblocks, and transportation disruptions, as well as on-site challenges such as power outages or supply shortages. Employment in Gaza is concentrated in public administration, including social security (29.7 percent), and retail trade (33 percent). More than 60 percent of workers have been displaced to shelters, camps, or informal settlements due to conflict-related destruction.