The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) recently published a report titled “Gaza War: Preliminary Findings on the Socio-Economic and Environmental Impact on Lebanon” in which it attempted to assess the impact of the Gaza war and its spread to Lebanon’s Southern borders on the country as a whole and on the south in particular. The report first went to describe the already dire state of Lebanon’s economy, whereby GDP contracted by 40% over the 2018-2022 period, the local currency depreciated by more than 98% and inflation hovering in the triple digit territory over the last three years. In addition, public revenues contracted from 13.1% of GDP in 2020 to 6% in 2022 (one of the lowest levels globally), with the concurrent drop in public expenditures from 16.4% to 5.7% of GDP shedding light on the government’s diminishing ability to secure basic services, and multidimensional poverty (82%) & unemployment (29.6%) attaining record levels. As far as the loss assessment is concerned, and in the light of the scarcity of available public data, the findings were based on interviews with key stakeholders and on a preliminary assessment by the UNDP team. The report added that the tourism sector, and which has been demonstrating an exceptional resilience & robust performance despite Lebanon’s ailing situation, was severely impacted by the events on Lebanon’s southern borders. In figures, the number of arriving passengers contracted from 245,997 during the month of October 2022 to 208,706 in October 2023 (the Gaza war commenced in early October), and by 41.75% annually during the first week of November to 34,163 passengers, while the number of departing passengers rose from 266,680 in October 2022 to 307,879 in October 2023. Always in the same vein, several commercial airlines suspended flights to Lebanon in the aftermath of the Gaza war, while the national carrier (Middle East Airlines) reduced its flights by 50%. Consequently, hotel occupancy sank to below 10% in October, driven by premature departures and trip cancellations (due to travel warnings), especially amongst European visitors who tend to visit Lebanon in the fall season. Similarly, restaurant activity took a severe hit, receding by 70-80% in weekdays and by 30-50% during the weekends. Finally on this point, the report commented that the anemic tourism activity will most probably have spillovers on other activities, namely the agricultural and industrial ones given the prevailing interlinkages between these sectors. The prevailing war will also dent international trade activity, with exports and imports (after an initial spike for stock piling of essential goods purposes) expected to falter due to security concerns, driven by detrimental risk classifications and hiking insurance premiums. Always in this regard, the UNDP projected the slowing international trade activity to bode ill for public finances, depriving the government of custom and VAT revenues, which constitute circa 63% of total tax revenues. The UNDP also expects that the Gaza war will have negative repercussions on remittance inflows to Lebanon, given that most of them were being channeled via informal channels such as people travelling to Lebanon. Overall, and whilst Lebanon’s economy was expected to grow by 0.2% in 2023 (following four years of contractions), the likelihood of contraction is now high, given the high contribution of the aforementioned sectors to the economy. As far as the south region is concerned, the report noted that the conflict has a three-pronged effect, namely in terms of human losses and displacements (64,053 internally displaced people of which 52% are female and 37% are children), physical damage to buildings, factories, infrastructure & utilities and a detrimental effect on agriculture, livestock, aquafarming and forestry due to the shelling.