The UN said Wednesday that the situation in Gaza was “catastrophic” after 11 years of “economic siege” and warned that Washington’s decision to halt assistance to Palestinian refugees would create “more misery”. “The situation in Gaza is becoming less and less livable,” said Isabelle Durant, the deputy head of the United Nations development agency (UNCTAD). “It is catastrophic,” she told reporters in Geneva. In a new report, the UN agency said the Palestinian economy, long stifled by the Israeli occupation, was being hit hard by a sharp drop in international support to the Palestinians, even before Washington’s dramatic cuts. Last year, international development assistance to the Palestinians shrunk by more than 10 percent compared to a year earlier. And at $720 million, it stood at just a third of the $2 billion received a decade earlier, the UNCTAD report showed. US cuts That dramatic drop in support came before US President Donald Trump’s government decided to completely halt its funding for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), which had previously stood at around $350 million a year. Published in Daily Times, September 13th 2018.