the netanyahu cabinet continues not only with genocidal campaign, but threatens other countries like lebanon with more wars. hi, welcome to economic divide. some of the highlights coming up in today's program: israeli business closures. 40,00 closures so far, from january up till now, there has even been an increase given the fact that this onslot began from october 7th. there's 60 thousand total at the end of 2024, the prediction could be higher, most of them. have been small businesses, some of the sectors that have been hit, the construction industry severely hit, some of the industries a behind it or around it have also uh suffered as a result, building materials for example, of ceramics and aluminum to name few, another industry that has been hit overall the trade sector, we're looking at the service uh sector to have been hit and uh other industries like fashion and tourism, how long will israeli economy? survive given all these

business closures. 46,00 businesses closed in israel since october 7. that is the state of affairs in the occupied palestinian territories today, one of which is projected to get even worse by the end of the year. thousands of businesses have closed down in israel since the beginning of the onslot on gaza, with more expected to close further exacer rating the economic crisis for the israeli regime. the damage to the israeli economy is extensive on all fronts, when companies close and cannot meet their financial obligations, it ripples out to affect customers and suppliers. loss of revenues is multiffold

from taxes to employees who will now not have money to spend in a lagging economy. this is adding to speculations that israel is heading for economic meltdown. the leader of the right-wing opposition israel beteneu party, avictor liberman has said children and adults, soldiers and reservists are suffering from nightmares about what has happened and what might happen. the israely economy is collapsing and the israely diplomacy is eroding. time now for the social media post of this program. first up, since the start of the onslot in gaza, support for the isolation of of israel has widened with the potential to alter israeli careers, her businesses, and to weigh its economy. next, the israelite tech investor schlomo dovrat war the ongoing onslot in gaza has revealed deep weaknesses of and has eroded trust in institutions. he

highlighted concern this could undermine israel's high-tech industry, key driver of his economy. then the best solution for israel is to be fully dismantled. zionism to be fully crushed as supremacist colonial ideology, and new fully democratic institution to be set in palestine for everyone there to live in peace, the state of palestine. then israel is set on escalating even as is literally wrecking their um, what we call the occupied lands, causing their economy to dip by fifth. and sers are even leaving, not to mention the international backlash. fascism is hell of a drug, it will have you dig your grave full of pride. and then finally, the topic for this program came about because of this post, israel in collapse, 46,00 businesses forced to close since october 7th. all right, those were some of the social media posts. let me introduce our guests for this first segments, which uh has the q&a. khalil jahsan is the executive.

director at the arab center washington dc, he's also political analyst and media commentator who joins us. khalil jashan, welcome to economic divide. thank you. my first question, lot of costs that have been put uh into this war in terms of expenditures, strain is causing on israel's economy, obviously the spending, and there has been such variety of ways that the spending has been distributed, whether it's displaced or what have you. has uh resulted in reduction of foreign reserves to some degree. um, we're looking at uh many sectors now affected israel's fiscal deficit is re 70% of his gdp for the month of may as well. of what's going on with the israely economy based on the uh genocidal onslot that it is uh exercising? that's a very good uh question uh this war has been unique uh from an israeli perspective uh first in terms of the duration and in terms. the cost, in israel's of

history, of course, there has been many wars, but they never lasted, you know, some of the the most dramatic wars like in 67, lasted six days, so israel as society is not used to protract if you will wars that last let's say nine months as in the case of gaza today this war has exceeded cost-wise more than 100 billion dollars some people say the amount in reality is is lot more several hundred percent more especially when you add you know like economic cost not just military cost when you add uh the the losses to the economy when you add also the cost to israel's allies, like the united states had to rush 14 billion dollars in aid to the israeli side to sustain its war economy, so the numbers are

staggering, they are in the tens of of billions of dollars and that's not going to be easy, in the past we have witnessed during wars in the region where the israeli economy... took several years to recover and it's going certainly to take more than decade if not more to recover from this one, essentially not through necessarily healthy economic development, but i would say israel would have to depend more on foreign assistance from the outside, particularly the united states and also on taxing, taxes always increase after war, somebody wars do not come for free, somebody got to pay the price and usually the citizens of country who had nothing to do necessarily with the war, or they did not support it necessarily, but they have to pay the price, so what you implied in your question is accurate, the israeli economy is suffering seriously from this war and it's going take it years if not

decades to recover from the effect of this war of vengeance, this useless war. one of the things that you mentioned there is the taxes need to increase, we're also looking somewhat to that the israel which at this point have reached a new high of 5.2%. um, the israel's currency is depreciating at the same time, so we mostly want to see inflation, which is going to put a further strain on consumers, and then of course is economic cost and palestinian themselves, whether in the occupied territories of gaza? uh, it definitely does, we are beginning to see the signs of such damage to the israeli economy, as you know in the past, we have witnessed deterioration economic growth in israel during times of war, which forced israeli governments at the time, whether in back in 56, back in 67, back in 73, back in 82, all these wars, essentially the price had to be paid by the israeli consumers, in

addition to the pain that this war has caused to the people under occupation, to the palestinian people, be they in the west bank or in gaza, gaza of course being the subject of total invasion. by the israelis and total destruction in attempt to commit genocide and and to basically push the whole palestinian population in gaza out of the strip into egypt or other neighboring countries, but the same thing applies also to the second front, which is the west bank, where violence has increased tremendously over the past nine months and definitely the economy also has been affected and a simal situation has also been emerging on the northern front, which is basically on the lebanese border, with attempt by the israelis to push the population of southern lebanon in into basically a save zone of some sort from their perspective, trying empty at least area more

than eight miles wide uh in southern lebanon for israel purposes and that has caused lot of difficulties both economic and and security wise. and humanitarian uh issues for the local population, the lebanese population of southern lebanon. all right, thank you for that. let me bring in our next guest, nico house, joins us, nico house is foreign policy analyst, election integrity analyst, also podcaster of the people podcast and contributor for hotspot media at hotspot uh hotspot on x. all right, nico house, welcome to economic tonight, no problem, thanks for having me. i'd like to ask you about the strain that the israely consumers on the one hand are feeling based on uh obviously the onslot. "there's lots of things that are putting pressure on them uh, including the value of their money uh and how far it can go, at this point inflation is obviously a big concern. uh, we're also looking at the fact that you have uh other um things that are putting a strain on them, including um unemployment, the economy overall, which uh

leads to um the budget being strained uh, israel, not knowing exactly how to generate more revenues, what are we looking at when it comes to the isway consumers in particular? yeah, 100% uh" "we've already actually seen the result of that, because private spending amongst israelis has dropped significantly as well as overall private investments and that's undoubtedly because of war uh back in the..." once upon a time war was profitable for lot of countries, that's not the case right now, war means instability, war means people can't go to work, war in the case of israel means that they're pulling people from these private sectors and sending them to battle not knowing if they're going to return, and so when you have all those factors that creates economic stability and economic instability almost always leads to inflation and it's actually double sword for for. at the moment because not only is israel uh israel not doing well against the dollar

at the moment uh the value is reduced significantly but the dollar itself isn't doing well so the the dollar itself because the us uh instability or at least the the the perceived instability of the united states uh the dollar itself is is dropping and the value of the dollar is dropping the check value against the dollar is also dropping and so this war has just not done anything remotely positive for israel's economy and you do have to wonder if that is also playing huge role in a lot of the protests that we've been seeing on the ground in israel, we know that those people aren't necessarily protesting the war, but lot of them are protesting netan yahoo and the government uh and his cabinet. time now to take a look at our info news section, first of... we're going to take a look at an issue that may be uh one that france should worry about immigration out of the country. this concerns

the wealthy where they has been reported are emigrating on mass. why? well, the left-wing alliance uh since the time that it took most seats in the recent parliamentary elections, it has promised to raise taxes on the rich. by how much? well, that is the source of concern. it is said to be up to 50% or even higher. one has to see whether that's going to transpire or not. then moving to a threat that. been issued by saudi arabia against the g7 uh they have threatened g7 over russian assets, believe it or not, the u.s. uk had wanted to confiscate the frozen sovereign funds uh, but saudi arabia has issued what's been described as veil threat, privately hinting that it might sell some of its eu debt holdings if the g7 went ahead with the confiscation plans. next up, working week six days, well that's what greece may be thinking, um, the question was asked in this. as to why it uh was thinking of doing this, a six-day working week in essence, well uh,

it's adopting a controversial new policy that bucks the trend worldwide of moving towards fewer working days, and uh, even though the law is voluntary for companies to adopt, the whole reason behind it is to kickstart the economy due to the wreckage of europe's worst financial crisis in decades, something which apparently is still haunting greece. then uh, iran and the breaks is our next topic here, uh, the parliament speaker, bff has said countering us sanctions is the most important issue raised at the bricks meeting that he attended in st. petersburg. he announced that was on the north south corridor and the energy transmission line. now overall bricks member countries are creating parallel institutions like the swift financial system where ghaf has said that bricks bilateral transactions are going to be done in non-dollar currency something which actually has been adopted but it will be um expanded even further. those were the topics we picked for our inve section uh just fe have topic in mind contaction is coming up

in this episode of iran seek we're going to uh beat the tehran permanent international fairground to visit the iran health 2024 the premier annual. event for medical professionals and companies who are working in this field to collaborate, showcase their product and introduce their products to the masses. stay tuned, times are listed below. it's time now for the in-depth section of the program. israely business closures may have reached a high, one in which the peak has not been reached yet, yet business closures on this sale were only. during the covid-19 lockdown, but since this genocidal war is continuing without an end and sight, well the

closers will continue well into the year 2024, the year we're in, and maybe even beyond that, let's take a look at what some the symptoms of this have been in terms of the genocidal war. what a business information company has pointed to serious damage to the israeli economy with the announcement of what has been 40,00 businesses that have been closed from january up till now. uh, it went to say that over 60,00 business closures may happen by the end the year. the closers have happened in the construction, trade and services sector, back in 2020, for comparison sake, the year of the corona crisis, 74,00 businesses were closed in this case you have small businesses up to five employees uh to have been closed, next we move to the graph that has israeli business losses in terms of uh what is said 57% of small businesses what you see over there uh have uh which employ five to 10 workers have reported severe losses compared to only 14% for large businesses with more than 250 jobs, it also showed that more than 70% of businesses in the construction and

food and beverage sectors reported severe revenue loss then moved to to the most vulnerable industries uh which have been sided to be the construction industry and as result also the entire ecosystem that operates around it. we're looking at for example for construction ceramics and air conditioning uh for tourism things like hotels and flights um trade for example clothes uh to be one of them and furniture and then agriculture produce and dairy you these are all uh industries within industries uh that have them suffering uh to the degree. that it has forced cl closures uh so that's obviously not good news when you see how this is spread over a large variety of sectors next the challenges well they are multipronged some of them cited here and these are just few by the way you're looking at labor shortages your sales to have increased uh that's obviously the uh worst then you have high interest rates financing

cost lack of raw materials and again this is just few uh that are plaguing. what is the israeli business environments? moving to how uh we need to put things into perspective, well take a look at this uh when you take a look at uh the new businesses yearly uh 57,742 that's before the onslot by the way is what israel created then you have active businesses to be around 683,45 now if you take 50% of israely businesses that's uh between 40 40 to 50% that's around 286,870. that's how many risk shut down and at this point given the fact that you have what's been reported to be about 6, well at the rate going in about four years time, if you have beenvolved wars, which the track record points to that, you're going to have the majority of business closed in israel, again if the trend trend continues with the instability, with the wars etc. well, in

terms of economic growth, the oecd by that organization, it reported 1.9% growth for the year 2024. and the 2025 4.6%. we have to wait and see whether that's actually going to transpire or not given the fact that this genocidal war is still ongoing and you also have the other fronts which is the uh hizbullah possibility of that expanding to a full-fledged war. let's bring in our gas to see what they think about this uh khalil jashan who's an executive director of the arab center washington dc uh joins khalil jashan welcome back the value of the reserves the central bank uh above 200 million for the year 2024. "we're looking at this war in the gaza strip, which requires uh much more ammunition than domestic manufacturers can currently produce. um, tell us a little bit about how troubling that is, especially for israel's manufacturing sector. all aspects of israel's economy this time are in trouble. in the past, in a way israel lucked out with the international support it received from the

west, particularly the us and europe, it managed to overcome the..." economic difficulties or implications of prior wars, this one, because like i said earlier, the nature of the war, the surprising nature of the war, how it started, and and the the duration being longer than any war that israel has waged in the past assuming that it was going to be very limited in scope, limited in geography, limited in time, and there we are nine months later, and there is no light at. end of the tunnel, it doesn't seem to be uh ending uh soon, at least all right, if you can expand a little bit more for us uh khalil on the manufacturing part in terms of how that is being affected, what are we looking at when it comes to the manufacturing sector in this really economy? the domestic manufacturing capacity definitely has been impacted, it has slowed

down, it has been damaged and it will take it many years frankly to uh so this war... "even though it was perceived at the beginning as a retaliatory war by israel, by the israeli government to teach palestinians and in particular hamas a lesson never to be forgotten, i think it end up teaching israel lot more lessons uh that they need to learn. i don't think they have learned these lessons yet and and uh the fact that they are going to to pay a price for these mistakes might in the future make them. think twice uh before they engage uh in in a genocidal ward war uh of this caliber. all right, thank you very much for that. i'd like to thank uh our guest chalil to have joined economic divide . let's bring in uh let's bring back nicho house foreign policy analyst and see what he thinks. nico house, when you take a look at the impact of the onslot on israel's economy, it's obviously very severe. one of the um

sectors aside from the things like tourism or the construction industry uh that's been affected severely is manufacturing sector and uh they are not able to um aside from making their products available within to have it imported out um or export it out and uh have sales that way uh can you tell us a little bit more about how the manufacturing sector. has been affected? yeah, bds is causing a problem for their manufacturing sector, but it's just the simple fact that they don't have enough people. uh, israel is not a large, it doesn't have a large population, and although there may be lot of people that claim israeli citizenship via the dual citizenship method, that doesn't mean that israel has lot of people that are actually in israel living there a full-time basis and i think that's hurting the manufacturing industry. now they can make is... make as many moves as they'd like monetarily uh, they can receive as much aid as they'd like from different nations, they even they're even withholding money that's supposed to go to

the west bank uh and that was meant for the west bank and allocated for the west bank specifically, they're withholding their money, millions of dollars in attempt to fund some of their efforts and curtail some of the financial that they've been suffering, but the reality is you have to have people to do the job, and right now israel is either calling up, it's people to go fight in these wars, not only once again against gaza, but against uh hezballah and lebanon, but they also are leaving, people are just choosing to leave israel, we've seen the videos of the airports flooded uh because they no longer feel safe, so you don't have people to do the job and you you're running out of money to pay the people to do the job, and not to mention the overall spinning to cover for the businesses that have taken a laws and the cover for those who have had leave businesses so fight in the war, so israel's... helping to support those those households, those that that spending is at over 80% and it's the highest it's ever been, so of course the manufacturing industry is going to continue

to suffer as long as this war proceeds, bank of israel chief has issued a warning about the cost. of this onslot, it warned that this genocidal onslot will cost $67 billion, others have put the cost at around $100 billion so far. a breakdown of the latest war cost estimate showed almost half the onslot expenditure or $32 billion will be needed to meet military needs. $10 billion will be needed for what the regime has described as civilian spending until 2025. this includes the cost of evacuate civilians,

providing housing them, and more. the central bank instated another $9 billion dollars in lost tax revenues and $6 billion to compensate for direct onslot damages. this has left the regime with no choice but to raise taxes and that will come a price. israel middle class, the leader of the opposition yar lapid warned recently. that high prices are collapsing the middle class, 40,00 business closures from october 7th up till now, the figure that may creep up to 70,000 andogenous onslot that continues with another possibility. well this regime's goals even if they were to be met like king hamas leaders, well it's going to come a cost of being delegitimized something which may have happened already and also boycotted the world

over. the question is is the cost worth continuing this genocidal war which at the end is going to leave israel bankrupt? i'm sure that's something that the regime officials have mold over, but yet they do decide to continue with it. that does it for this edition of the program, hope you liked it, if you have any questions or comments. to us contact information is on this monitor here from the team is goodbye until the next economic divide. will the apartment hear the calls for a

permanent cease fire? in gaza, well not from zion don or jd vans, that's for sure, not from president biden or cacklin camela harris, either, nor from big david lamy shaking the hand of netanyahu this very week, they'll not hear it from any of the western leader. question is, will they hear it effectively from you? watch and see.

your headlines on press tv israel conducts multiple strikes on the poor city of hodeda, yemanise vod the regime will pay the price. israel's unrelenting strikes continue to pound the gaza strip as death toll from the regime's genocide approaches 39,000 and israeli forces attack antitanyahu protesters who call for deal with hamas to secure the release.