Human and development costs of the Middle East’s protracted conflict

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The Israel–Hamas war, now in its thirteenth month, has caused unprecedented levels of physical destruction and economic collapse in Gaza and southern Lebanon. In the second quarter of 2024, the economies of Gaza and the West Bank contracted by 86% and 23% respectively, while 90% of pre-war jobs in Gaza had been lost. The scale of civilian casualties and the humanitarian emergency, with Palestinians suffering from widespread shortages of food, fuel and medical equipment, have raised doubts about Israel’s war aims and conduct.

Conflict trends and driversWhile remarkable, the current escalation of war in the Middle East is part of a broader upward trend of political violence and conflict in the region, which increased in intensity after the Arab uprisings in 2011. Starting with Iraq in 2003, then Libya, Syria and Yemen after the Arab Spring, and now Israel, Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories, conflicts in these countries have caused massive destruction, displacement and loss of life, which are coupled with development setbacks in the form of foregone income, capital flight, reduced trade and human-capital losses. According to the World Bank, the Middle East and North Africa’s (MENA) average number of conflict episodes per year more than doubled between the 1990s and 2010, while its share of global conflict-related fatalities increased sixfold between the 1990s and 2022.

Since 2000, conflicts in the MENA region have been driven by a mix of factors, including historical identity-based divisions, domestic authoritarianism and geopolitical turmoil. In 2011, the chronic failure of governments to address social and economic grievances led to domestic uprisings in Libya, Syria and Yemen that soon turned into politically intractable armed conflicts that drew in external powers. But even before then, the rise of transnational non-state armed groups like al-Qaeda and later the Islamic State (ISIS) were followed by botched foreign military interventions that led to confrontations between proxy forces and international and regional powers. Geopolitical and regional-security imperatives trumped international diplomatic efforts to facilitate conflict resolution.