Gaza 'unlivable' 10 yrs into Israeli siege: UN

A report by the United Nations says living conditions in the Gaza Strip have worsened in the 10 years since the territory was blockaded by Israel.

The report, which was published on Tuesday and titled "Gaza - 10 years later", says that key indicators identified in an earlier 2012 UN report, such as declining incomes, healthcare, education and electricity have deteriorated yet further.

The UN said that real GDP per capita in Gaza has decreased while the provision of urgently-needed health services has continued to decline.

The report also finds that Gaza's only water source is predicted to be "irreversibly-depleted" by 2020, unless immediate action is taken.

"Gaza has continued on its trajectory of de-development, in many cases even faster than we had originally projected," said Robert Piper, the UN Coordinator for Humanitarian Aid and Development Activities.

"When you're down to two hours of power a day and you have 60 percent youth unemployment rates ... that unlivability threshold has been passed quite a long time ago."

Piper said that while continuous humanitarian assistance, particularly through UN services, are helping to slow this descent, the downward direction remains clear.

"I see this extraordinarily inhuman and unjust process of strangling gradually two million civilians in Gaza that really pose a threat to nobody," he added.

Robert Vallent, the spokesperson for the UN Development Program in Gaza, said that Gaza's residents should not be relegated to a humanitarian case.

"People are not necessarily in a condition of starvation but they are in a critical situation," he said. "This is a man-made political situation that requires political action."

Meanwhile, two Palestinians were shot dead during clashes with the Israeli army in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank yesterday. One of the two had been evacuated in serious condition and later succumbed to his wounds, medical sources said.