Fifth of Israelis displaced by war out of work, survey shows

One-fifth of Israelis who were forced to evacuate their homes after 7 October 2023 have lost their jobs, the Israel Democracy Institute said today, underlining the broader cost to the Israeli economy from the war on Gaza, Reuters reports.

Tens of thousands of Israelis were evacuated from towns in the Gaza envelope and near the Lebanese borders.

Most spent months living in temporary accommodation across Israel, helped by government subsidies that added to the billions of dollars spent on the military during the war, but away from their jobs and livelihoods.

Just over a third (39 per cent), had returned to their homes, according to the survey, conducted in December and January by the non-partisan IDI think tank, while most of the areas in the north were still deserted.

But 19 per cent of those in employment before the war were out of work when the survey was conducted, according to the survey by the IDI, highlighting the cost to an economy that grew by just one per cent in 2024. Another three per cent were called in to reserve military duty.

Around a third of Israeli households have reported a fall in their incomes since the start of the war, a proportion that reached as high as 44 per cent among households in the north, where economic activity in businesses, tourism and the agricultural sector was severely impacted.

The Bank of Israel said in October that the sharp slowdown on economic activity in northern areas of Israel as a result of the war would add to the pressures on an economy already squeezed by higher spending on defence and a shortage of labour in key sectors including construction.

Tens of thousands of Palestinian workers who lost their jobs after Israel closed the borders to them at the start of the war have also remained unemployed, putting pressure on the strained finances of the Palestinian Authority (PA). While Israeli occupation authorities have withheld taxes collected on behalf of the PA. In January, the PA Ministry of Finance said the total withheld funds stood at over $980 million as of 2024.

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