This report from the BBC is about the UN describing the actual situation in Gaza - (using facts and statistics note,
). So it looks suspiciously like a pre-emptive propaganda strike was attempted.Interesting that.
Anyway - this is what the UN reports:
Gaza unemployment levels 'among worst in world'
Gaza's unemployment rate was among the world's highest, at 45.2% in late 2010, the UN has found, as Israel's blockade of the territory enters its fifth year.
Real wages meanwhile fell by more than a third, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said.
The report says that private businesses have been hardest hit by the continuing ban on virtually all exports.
Israel imposed sanctions in 2006 after Gaza militants snatched Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
'Disturbing'
The blockade tightened a year later when Hamas ousted rival Palestinian organisation Fatah from the territory.
UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness said of the report in a statement: "These are disturbing trends and the refugees, who make up two-thirds of Gaza's 1.5 million population, were the worst hit."
The unemployment figure, for the second half of 2010, was a slight improvement on the 45.7% jobless rate during the same period in 2009.
But it was an increase from the first half of 2010, when a temporary building boom boosted jobs.
The report says that while private businesses have suffered most, the Hamas-run public sector is one of the few areas where there has been economic growth, with the government employing tens of thousands of people.
Mr Gunness said the research had found that since 2007 Hamas had been able to increase public employment by at least one fifth.
"If the aim of the blockade policy was to weaken the Hamas administration, the public employment numbers suggest this has failed," Mr Gunness added.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13758003
