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tv   Economic Divide  PRESSTV  November 23, 2023 5:02pm-5:31pm IRST

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while the israeli genocidal war keeps racking up dead palestinians, many of them women and children, there's another tally that is being racked up and that is the cost for israel, but to what degree is israel drowning in these casts and what about the wider economy? to that end, are palestinians and their economy also affected by the israeli carnage in the ghaza strip. hi, i'm kavid, welcome to economic divide. some of the headlines coming up, israel's economy in terms of the cost of the war, over $250 million dollars daily, obviously a budget deficit has occurred, and many businesses have been closed because of it. how bad has the israeli economy been affected by this war. then we take a look at the occupied west bank in terms of the economy there, tension. between palestinians
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and settlers is not helping businesses and the workers, especially the palestinian ones. town entrances have been closed, severe restrictions on movement, and many palestinians from gaza, if not all have been fired from their jobs. then the world economic impact, uh, we are looking at the world economic growth to be downgraded, uh, we are also looking at energy price increases, and west asian economies regionally have been affected. israel's incursion into the gaza strip has sparked concerns over the short and long-term impacts of the war on the regime's economy, according to reports, the absence of thousands of workers from their jobs due to the ongoing war has been costing the israeli economy and estimated $600 millions a week,
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that is about 6% of the weekly gdp, one in three businesses have either shuttered or operating at 20% capacity since the start of the operation on october 7th, more than half of businesses face revenue losses, surpassing the 50% mark in the southern regions of the... by territories close to the gaza strip, two-thirds of businesses either closed or are functioning to a minimum. the gaza war has cost israely economy almost $8 billion dollars to date with a further $260 million dollars in losses incurred with every day that passes. the war has deelt a heavy blow to israel's key economic sectors. tourism for example has been hit hard. the onset of the operation has decimated travel with daily flights to and from bengorian airport plummeting from 500 to mir 100. timed
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off our social media post our first pick the take, detained, tortured and banned, workers from gaza in israel, following the events of october 7, where thousands of palestinians who were from gaza and working in israel were suddenly labeled illegal and detained without charge. they have related stories of abuses and beatings. in two cases, the workers died in prison. many of them have now been released back into gaza, but they are left. wondering what lies ahead. next, israel devastating the palestinian economy, the un has warned where gaza is experiencing unimaginable levels of destruction as the palestinian economy suffers after a month of war. as war passed the one month more mark this week poverty had increased by another 20%, and gross domestic product has declined. onto viewer comments, sovietski said israel's goal is ethnically cleanse two and a half million people of gaza, raise it all down, and rebuild it as a jewish city, it's all
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about achieving the greater israel, step-by-step, and the genocide of the goim, called human animals, as israel sees it, has been okay by their rabbies, that's how they look at israel as at palestinians. next, the agricultural ministry, seeking to lear out of work israelis and then for them to take up jobs on farms, the ministry has promised to double the wages of farm hands in fields close to the gaza and the lebanes. orders as it tries to make up for serious manpower shortage across the agricultural sector. okay, those were some of the posts there, by the way, the manpower shortage is our focus of the in-depth section, and that's a big one, do stay tuned as we dive into that topic. let me first introduce our guest for our q&a, the first one in this program. joining us is dimitri lascaris, he's a lawyer, journalist and activist. dimitri.
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welcome to the program, um, we're taking a look at how the israeli economy is being impacted by this war, by some accounts is being devastated, the cost of the war itself, on the one hand, you have the economy that is being negatively impacted, but in a lot of sectors, has israel taken the aftermath of uh the war, taking that into consideration, how it wants to for example recuperate um given that the situation going into the war was um um on on very shaky grounds. i don't think israel's government has created much of a plan for anything frankly and they're kind of flying by the seat of their pants, they view this as an opportunity to inflict uh decisive. of defeat on the palestinian resistance movements and uh and that's all they're really focused on at the moment, i think that ultimately in the back of their minds they're hoping and expecting the us government will bail them out, which may or may not happen, but i think that the writing on the wall is quite clear and israel's economy is suffering devastating damage and i
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think this damage is permanent frankly lot of people uh who might have been willing to live in israel and work in israel, including skilled professionals are probably not going to be interested in doing that. anymore, there will probably be a significant exodus of highly educated people as a result of this, um, and uh, i think israel's reputation has been so tarnished, so damaged by the atrocities in gaza, that lot of people are just not going to want to do business with israel going forward. it's time now for the informa section of the program. first topic: split world economy: this title actually caught our attention, which is why we picked it. it went to say world economy may split into what it called rival blocks. fragmentation, it said will have severe implications for global trade and financial stability. this warning actually came from christine lagard. now the warning she
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explained further was that there are increasing signs that the global economy is fragmenting into competing blocks uh that obviously has so much behind it, but uh basically what that means is that we are going for polarization when it comes to that topic. next up a meeting that was highly anticipated and that's between the chinese president and the us presidents uh the biden g meeting common ground on climate for example, but they stopped short of committing to end fossil fuels. they also agree to tackle the fentinol trafficking from china into the us, by the way, it cost 75,000 deaths in the us, but this is what uh poor water. over the whole thing, where biden call g, a dictator, that was slammed by china in more ways than one. next up, the euro zone and poverty in one of the countries there, namely france, living on 18 euros a day, women most affected in that country, as the poverty actually is deepening there. single
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adult homes were the most representative group, making up 75% of those that the charity took in among them, mainly single mothers, 25.7%, and then single women, 20%. next up, dedollarization drive continues, in this case and point we're looking at venezuela and russia, they're advanced in their dedollarization payment system, where uh today the meer platform has allowed payments to be made in 100% of the territory of venezuela, and about 36% of all payment points except mer cars, that's what the venezuelan foreign affairs minister said, those are the topics we picked for our infini section, if you liked it, didn't like it, or if you have topic of the... for the section, do send them to us, contact information is on your screens.
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you see, it's not just about islam, it's not just about muslim leaders, it's about humanity, it's about the right to leave. we cannot be panafricanist if we can't associate with the oppressed nation, issuing immediate arrest warrant for key decision makers, including mr. netanyahu, who is responsible for violations of international the country's massive military mobilization has created serious economic strains, but how
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severe? is it just bump or are we talking about serious economic crisis? in this in-depth section, that's what we want to find out, and let's count the ways that this is a... gdp is $52.5 billion dollars, that was recorded for the year 2022. then in terms of the gdp per capita, it sounds rather high, $54,710 yearly, but with inflation in places like tel aviv, that doesn't amount to much. here is the economic structure in terms of a gdp composition, where the money is divided in sectors, we're looking at 1.2% for sectors such as agriculture, hunting, forestry and fishing, then we're looking. get industries um in general, which uh 20.1% is the figure there,
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and then this particular uh bar that you see here, or the semi-circle that's rounding off, that's for services overall, we're going to break that down a little later in the program, it's a huge field in terms of the sector is 78.7%, and notice the reserves over here, $200 billion dollars, that's what money is coming right now in terms of an output for the costs that are occurring based on uh the war that's happening. of course, every day that goes by, that's uh adding and taking away from the uh reserves that israel has. all right, let's move to the next uh graph that we have for you, this is very important in terms of the war cost, now we just happened, we just talked about the reserves, here you can see that the daily cost of the war amounts to $246 million dollars, that's what the israeli finance minister has said, this is while the bank of israel, that has a different figure, it has put the war cost as you're about to a at a different figure went into it a monthly basis and it said that that
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amount is for the weekly $600 million dollars which amounts to $85.71 million dollars per day. okay, so that is what we're looking at in terms of the figure there. basically that amounts to a 6% gdp drop uh for the week as that stands. okay, now let's move to the next graph. this is what the previous wars have cost. "we just went to the 206 and 2014 war, 0.5% is what that amounted to, but when it comes to this uh war from the operational flood, that's a lot more. now estimates have put that from anywhere between 3.5% to drop of 15% annual terms, when you take a look at how much this war is uh taken away from the gdp. all right, now we take are going to take a look at the heart of what this in-depth section is all about, and that is israeli man. power impact, we start out with the total workforce that exists uh in the uh in
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israel as a whole is 4.1 million people who are employed in the workforce, that's the total number of people and that's the based on the 2022 figures. now netanyahu has called up uh what is around to 35000 reservists, so that's important for you to take that into account in terms of how many people were called in visa the total workforce. now the war impact on israel's economy, tourism is one of the biggest ones, gdp. of tourism is 3% in terms of the total jobs contributes 6% to the total uh economy there of uh israel then the next industry that we take a look at over here is agriculture that's facing also a big shortfall how many 1000 farmers is what israel is short of and the israeli minister of agriculture has proposed actually a plan to hire 800 of those from the occupied west bank good luck with that because not many palestinians that can come forward for that. then we go to the construction sector,
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there's a loss of revenue there, it's uh big, it's 37 million dollars daily, and that is not good obviously for the economy, big hit that it's incurred on israeli economy. now, we move to the biggest sector of all, the jewel of israel, it's israel's tech sector, in terms of the gdp, it's it's a lot, the tech sector contributes 18% to israel's gdp, okay, that's. uh big numbers, it's almost a quarter of its gdp. in terms of the uh workforce itself, in that sector, the uh percentage again, it's big in terms of the numbers and how much of that workforce contributes and we're looking at about 14%. this figure has fluctuated between 14% to 18%. it's so important that the high-tech sector is responsible for over 50% of israeli export. that's how important this sector is. all right, next up, the tech investments, so
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you can see how major sector this is, it has, it's been declining for seven quarters. the decline you will see from the year 2022, in terms of investment, compared to 2023, was $14.7 billion dollars and then for 2023 you're looking at 5.6 billion, that's a minus 62% drop, so obviously this tech sector was poorly before the war, and you can see that uh, that drop is just uh monumental when it comes to the sector as a whole. finally, we did some math in terms of the number of people, in the workforce, as we said, the total workforce in israel is 4.1 million people, all right, so then we're looking for the people who have been called for duty, reserve and active, that's 764, in terms of the palestinians out of the workforce, that's 218, you're looking at the tech sector itself, 600,0 people that are out of the
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workforce, now if you add all of these up, that's 1,582, people out of the workforce uh out of that 4.1 million people okay, so that's a large number. now this is the final stat that we need to take a look at one and three businesses have been shut based on the times of israel, if one and three businesses are shut, just imagine how many more people are out of the workforce, when you add it to this 1 million 582,00 figure, so uh some estimates are putting that to be around 50%. why a do we have question marks over here? because the figures that we got did not match up, some were higher than uh the other, they were not consistent. so that's what we're looking at, and if we're looking at a 50% of the workforce um not employed, obviously the economy is tanking and is facing economic crisis. let's bring in our guest uh for this section, i should say bring back our guest
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dimitri lares is a lawyer, journalist and activist who rejoins us. dimitri, welcome back to the program, um... the impact of this war is uh huge when it comes to not only in terms of occupied palestine uh but also as it is uh going away from the borders into the world economy. it's evident in the energy sector first the imf has downgraded the global economic growth based on that uh also we know europe is being affected by that uh is that a realistic scenario in terms of the way that that's bleading into the world economy in particular europe? absolutely there is no question that uh, just let's just look at the price of oil and gas, if uh, you know, access to the middle east vast resources of oil and gas, becomes constrained relative to where we are currently, that is undoubtedly going to cause a dramatic increase in the price of oil and price of gas, and already you are seeing levels of inflation in the west and other parts of the
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world, that are causing extraordinary hardship to a wide swats of. the population, the last thing uh the economies of the western world and the global economy can stand right now is an oil price shock, and that's where we're heading, as i say, i think that israel's uh government has completely gone off the deep end, at least in the past, despite all of its criminality uh, they seem to have a good sense within israel's government of how much of atrocity uh the global community would tolerate, they've thrown caution to the winds now, and this is going to ultimately cause escalation, i think uh, that's where we're headed, and that's going to have very serious impacts on the price of oil, accessibility to the middle east resources, and therefore the global economy will suffer, unfortunately. according
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to report by the united nations development program, israel's war in hamas could set the palestinian economy in gaza and the west bank back. decades, one day in the week, i open two days as was time, you get poor, nowhere to go, nothing to do, the war start, you don't talk about, because this time is very difficult, since the start of the latest conflict, the number of palestinians living in poverty has risen by 300,000. past month of conflict has erased 61% of employment in gaza and 24% of employment in the west bank. palestinian gdp is expected to have fallen 4.2% after one month of war, compared with... pre-war estimates: a loss of about $857 million. the most important and potentially impactful way in which tensions could spill over into the european economy is through the oil and gas markets, the ongoing israeli
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hamas war could affect european economies via lower regional trade, tighter financial conditions, higher energy prices, and lower consumer confidence. the international monetary fund has warned that the conflict could drive up inflation as central banks continue the battle to bring it down. since the current conflict broke out, commodities markets have seen increase volatility with frent crude oil and european natural gas prices up by around 9% and 34% at the peak respectively. hello and welcome to the quick take section. i'm mattiapolis. when it comes to the israeli genocidal war on palestinians, the economic ramifications go beyond the gaza strip or... the west bank for that matter. we have broken down this into regional and global impacts where globally, for example, europe will suffer. first, the impact on
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regional countries. when it comes to regional states, the war on gaza has impacted the tourism of several countries like egypt, jordan, and lebanon. in jordan, tourism accounts for 10% of gross domestic product, and since the war broke out, woodby visitors are canceling their trips. egypt. also depends on tourism revenues, perhaps more so now than before, since it has an imf loan, and revenue cuts will threaten paying back its loan. according economists, it could cost egypt egypt billions in lost tourism revenues, this fiscal year alone. egypt doesn't have the foreign exchange buffers to absorb that sort of hit, and finally, lebanon, which is already in a deep economic crisis, relies on tourism for about 40% of gdp and now faces... a further economic deterioration, many believe this specter of the war spreading regionally will be to the benefit of oil producing countries of the persian gulf region, since the price of oil
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will increase, but that is not the case, even though the higher oil prices could boost state revenues dented by opec output cuts, this will likely be offset by reduced foreign direct investment inflows and tourism income. meanwhile, the international monetary fund kept its global economic growth projection for this year at 3%, slower than the 3.5% expansion recorded in 2022, and for 2024, the fund expects the global gross domestic product to expand to 2.9%. europe has already felt the brunt of the israel war on gaza, especially when it comes to energy prices. according to goldman sax, the war has affected european economies via lower regional trade. highter financial conditions and higher energy prices and lower consumer confidence. if oil prices continue to rise, this would pose a risk to the european
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central bank's efforts to rain in inflation. and that does it for this quick take section, please send us your comments, contact info is coming up. i'm matian and i'll see you next week. going into the... war israel's economy was not doing that well, as we mentioned in our in-depth section, the high-tech sector had seven consecutive quarters of contraction, that's supposed to be the duel of israel, mean that speaks volumes for itself. now the problem is, moving forward, the war is still continuing as as we're seeing right now, uh, but even if that gets solved, is the palestinian, israeli conflict going to be addressed, is that going to be solved, that's what's going to keep uh investment away from it. israel and also from within many israelis are not going to feel that comfortable staying inside of israel. that does for this edition of the program, as i've mentioned before, we're continuing with
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this theme, as long as the war uh continues, tell us if that's a good idea, and if we're giving you information that is useful, and even if not even more appreciated if you drop us a line, contact information is behind me. tire team here at economic divide, it's goodbye, until the next program. on november 16th, the commander of the islamic revolutionary guard cource force, brigadier general ismail khahani sent a
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public letter to hamas. the letter took the headlines right away. but what was the letter all about? what is its significance? why was it published at this time, and how should it be read without missing point? these and more on this edition of iran today.
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الاراده والله ما نتعب ولا ما مهتميه.
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the headlines this hour, israel presses ahead with his air strikes on the gaza strip, after agreeing to temporary choose, which the regime now says will not start until at least friday. isbella says it has hit several military targets in the north of the occupied territories, israely media. call one of the strikes the most significant from lebanon since the start of the war in gaza. and president says israel has failed to achieve its goals in the gaza war, adding that all the regime supporters are complicit in his crimes.