Israel sees 20% decline in GDP as war bites

Israel's economy suffered one of its worst-ever slumps, after the Hamas war paralysed businesses, forced people to flee their homes, and caused the military to call up hundreds of thousands of reservists.

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GDP shrank an annualized 19.4% in the final three months of 2023, in seasonally-adjusted terms, preliminary figures released on Monday showed. That was worse than every estimate in a Bloomberg survey of analysts, whose median forecast was for a decline of 10.5%. The shekel weakened slightly