The Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian territory imposes a huge price tag on the Palestinian economy. Israeli restrictions prevent Palestinians from accessing much of their land and from exploiting most of their natural resources; they isolate the Palestinians from global markets, and fragment their territory into small, badly connected, “cantons”. As recently highlighted also by international economic organisations, including the World Bank, UNCTAD and the IMF, these restrictions are the main impediment to any prospects of a sustainable Palestinian economy.
Acknowledging this, and in spite of data scarcity and challenges in carrying out such an immense task, a joint work between the Palestinian Ministry of National Economy and the Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem (ARIJ), an independent think-tank, has been conducted to provide the first systematic quantification of the annual costs imposed by the occupation on the Palestinian economy. The main results of such analysis are presented in this report, which aims to be a regular publication monitoring and quantifying the costs of Israeli restrictions on the Palestinian economy.