Although there is no point of comparison with the pain caused by human losses and the anguish of destruction, war conflicts always have a high economic cost. And in Israel, a country accustomed to wars, an estimate has already been published of what Operation Guardian of the Walls may have cost, which pitted the country’s armed forces against the Islamic group Hamas, and which caused 255 deaths in the Gaza Strip and 13 in Israel.
The work, prepared by the renowned Israeli economist of Argentine origin Manuel Trajtenberg, director of the Institute for National Security Studies, a think tank affiliated with Tel Aviv University, prepared the accounts based on comparisons with the 2014 Gaza war, call in the country Operation Protective Margin.
This operation, which lasted 11 days, had an approximate cost of 1,755 million dollars. Here’s how this amount was arrived at.
How do you calculate the cost of a war?
Trajtenberg, who prepared the estimate with another researcher at the institute, Tomer Fadlon, admitted that it will still take weeks or months to find more precise numbers. However, Operation Protective Margin, which took place between July and August 2014, provides good indicators, the economist wrote.
The deployment of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on that occasion cost about 7,000 million shekels, about 2,160 million dollars at the current exchange rate.
To this expense must be added 1,700 million shekels (523 million dollars) for “the cost to the economy and the compensation paid for damages on the home front”, to reach a total of 8,700 million shekels (about 2,686 million dollars), the report summarized.
“The previous rounds of war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip provide a reasonable basis for an initial estimate,” continues the institute’s report, which – anyway – asks “to highlight the main differences between this operation (from 2021) and its predecessors ”.
For example, a big difference is the duration of the conflict: 50 days in 2014 and only 11 in May of this year. In this latest confrontation, the Trajtenberg study indicates, the IDF
“They used the same amount of firepower against targets in the Gaza Strip, which implies that the intensity of the shelling in Operation Guardian of the Walls was five times greater than in Operation Protective Edge.”
A second difference is the expansion of the designated “danger zone” within Israel to 80 kilometers from the Gaza Strip last May, compared to just 40 kilometers in Operation Protective Edge, they noted.
“As a result,” they explained, “increased economic activity was affected, particularly since the longest range (of Hamas rockets) included the central region around Tel Aviv, where a large proportion of Israel’s economy is concentrated.”
However, they clarified, “the relatively short duration of the operation compensated to some extent for the greater range” of the 4,360 projectiles that the Islamic groups launched from the Gaza Strip (although, it is estimated, 1,000 of them missed and fell within the territory Palestinian).
What expenses do the estimates include?
Trajtenberg and Fadlon first calculated the direct military costs, taking into account that, for the 2014 operation, the Defense Ministry established the figure of 7,000 million shekels in the exclusive field of IDF maneuvers.
That number includes a price tag of NIS 80-120 million for each day of air actions and $ 50,000 for each Tamir, the interceptor missiles that use Iron Dome batteries.
“Given that Operation Guardian of the Walls was more intense, presumably the daily cost of the air war was twice the cost of Operation Protective Margin,” they indicated, later estimating that, even being shorter, this year’s maneuvers they ended up costing between 4,000 and 5 billion shekels.
Regarding the property damage caused by the launching of rockets at Israel, the authors recalled that, after Operation Protective Edge, 4,600 claims for direct damages were filed in the country and that the total compensation amounted to 200 million shekels. (about $ 61.7 million), which leaves an average of 44,000 shekels.
“This time around, the damage will almost certainly be more extensive, due to the increased incoming destructive firepower from the Gaza Strip,” the analysts wrote. Therefore, they concluded, “the average claim is likely to be higher, probably around 60,000 shekels,” producing a total of 315 million (about $ 97.2 million) in damages.
Finally, in the area of damage to economic activity, the report highlighted that the initial calculations of the Israel Manufacturers Association put that cost at 1,200 million shekels (370 million dollars).
“This estimate is based primarily on the lost workdays of about a third of employees in southern Israel, while it was estimated that workdays in the central region were reduced by 10 percent,” they said.
Taking the larger figures from these early estimates, the overall cost of this latest confrontation with Hamas was NIS 5,685 million, or about $ 1,755 million, compared to NIS 8.7 billion in the 2014 conflict.
With that amount of money, 92 million 368,421 doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine against COVID-19 could have been purchased, with which it could easily vaccinate its population completely five times or more than three times to all the inhabitants of Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Other costs not included
The authors added that, even with the possibility that the “high intensity” of the military actions and the consequences of the internal clashes between Arabs and Jews in mixed cities of Israel during the conflict could increase this number, “there is no doubt “That the short duration of the confrontation contributed to lower costs.
In addition, Trajtenberg and Fadlon pointed to other factors that would have contributed to a less costly battle, starting with the fact that the country was already operating – and very well – in emergency mode because of the coronavirus pandemic.
According to the report, thanks to this previous entrenchment of society and the local economy due to COVID-19, “the damage to the high-tech sector, which accounts for 52% of Israeli exports was minimal,” for example, while education was already used to virtual classes and easily adapted to the 11 days of rockets falling from the Gaza Strip.
On the other hand, the mobilization of reserve soldiers was also limited: less than 10,000 IDF men and women. At a cost of 500 shekels ($ 155) per day per reservist, the numbers were much lower when compared to the 40,000 Israelis who were called back to active duty during the duration of Protective Edge.
Later on, the May conflict will surely have other costs, the authors warn, pointing in particular to the need to build new and better shelters for civilians, especially in the areas most frequently attacked by Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
The report gives the example of Ashkelon, one of the main cities in the south of the country, on the Mediterranean, and a regular target of rockets. “Providing adequate shelters for the entire population of Ashkelon, a city that suffered heavy bombardment, could reach 1,400 million shekels,” about $ 432 million, they concluded.
