TEL AVIV, Oct 21 (ANSAMED)- Tel Aviv hit back at criticism that an Israeli pullout would cause economic isolation and an increase in poverty in the Gaza Strip, the Lebanese 'Daily Star' newspaper reports. According to Israel-based experts, the pullout could revive local economy if Palestinian goods and workers will be allowed to freely move in and out of the territory. "Employment will be the harshest test of the disengagement plan," Adi Ashkenazi, formerly head of the economic department of the Israeli Army's civilian arm in the Palestinian territories said during a conference on Israeli-Palestinian economic relations. Ashkenazìs statements came days after the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA) and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) warned that the Israeli pullout would not financially benefit Gaza. The Gaza-based PCHR said that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan would not allow Palestinians to work in Israel, or for Gaza to be part of the Israeli economy. The PCHR believe that Gaza would become an offshoot of the Egyptian economy, and would result in many leaving the strip. Some 5,000 Palestinians have recently lost their with the closing of the Israeli-controlled Erez industrial zone at the entrance of the Gaza Strip. Unemployment has soared in the Palestinian territories in the past four years to reach some 40% of the labor force, and exports have halved. The World Bank's local representative put the blame squarely on army closures.