Geneva (AsiaNews/Agencies) - Countries involved in Middle East conflicts have paid more than 12 trillion dollars since 1991.
The estimate, the first of its kind, was revealed yesterday at the office of the United Nations in Geneva (Switzerland), in a report from the India-based Strategic Foresight Group, and also includes an evaluation of the lack of development and the effects on the standard of living in the countries affected. The highest costs are connected to the conflict between Israel and Palestine, in Lebanon, and the invasion of Iraq by the United States.
Sundeep Waslekar, who coordinated the study, has explained that income for both Israelis and Palestinians since the Madrid conference of 1991 would have been at least double, if a lasting peace had been agreed. If there were immediate peace, the average Israeli income would rise significantly, even if Tel Aviv agreed to compensate Palestinian refugees and move its more than 150,000 settlers out of the West Bank.
In the same way, the income for Palestinians would be more than double, even if they accepted their current situation.
For this reason, Waslekar maintains that failing to choose peace means, for every country, simply continuing "the devastation" and racking up greater and greater costs. Peace would even have very positive effects for countries at the edges of the conflict: for example, with an increase of 1,250 dollars in per capita income in Jordan, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees are living.
In Iraq, without the war and the previous sanctions, the national income would be 38 times higher, totaling 2.2 trillion dollars.
Waslekar says that the study has precise limits, in that "there are costs you can't measure - like the cost in human dignity."