News - Middle East: With nearly two million people living below poverty line and the Arab population remaining the most affected, Israel has been placed second to last in poverty ranking of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). 

Released on Wednesday, the annual report by the National Insurance Institute on the scope of poverty said that a total of 1.98 million people, including 872,400 children, were living below the line in 2023.

The figure means that overall, 20.7 percent of people in the occupied territories lived in poverty, comprising one fifth of the population.

Children comprise 44 percent of all poor people, even though their proportion in the population is 32.5 percent, according to the report.

It also found that rates of deprivation are at their highest in the Arab (38.4 percent) and ultra-Orthodox (33 percent) communities, where half the children are living below the poverty line.

Meanwhile, the report ranked Modi'in Illit and al-Quds as the most affected areas with poverty rates of 48.3 and 38.3 percent, respectively.

It further noted that prices rose in 2023 by 4.2 percent, forcing those with lower income to cut other expenses, such as 9.7 percent who gave up on medical treatment or 5 percent did without a hot meal at least once every other day.

Moreover, the report found that Israel's genocidal war on the Gaza Strip cut the regime’s economic growth from 6.5 percent in 2022 to just 2 percent in 2023, adding that the worst hit people were self-employed.

"This was just a promo for next year's report, where we'll see the impact of the war on Israel's citizens and the collapse of the middle class," the director of the Pitchon Lev nonprofit organization, Eli Cohen, warned.

"We have collected alarming data showing a 23 percent rise in requests for assistance in the course of 2024."

Israel’s economy has been under strain since early October 2023, when the regime unleashed its bloody Gaza onslaught.

The Bank of Israel had estimated the cost of the offensive, which significantly impacted services such as tourism and restaurants, at around $67 billion by 2025.

Earlier this week, the Knesset Finance Committee approved a series of tax hikes to fill a fiscal gap amid high military expenses, as Israel is more than 14 months into its brutal aggression against Gaza. 

The tax hikes are expected to erode the income of Israel’s working population, which is already struggling to make ends meet.

Source: Press TV