The ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza war brings a glimmer of hope, but the task ahead is monumental. Rebuilding the devastated Palestinian enclave will take decades, cost billions, and present numerous challenges.
After over 15 months of relentless Israel i bombardment, Gaza has been left in ruins. If last week's ceasefire holds, rebuilding could take decades, cost tens of billions of dollars, and present overwhelming obstacles. On January 16, following a truce announcement amid the war between Israel and Hamas, a child recovered books from the rubble of a building hit in Israel i strikes the previous night in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip.
After more than 15 months of relentless Israeli air and ground assaults on Gaza, many of the tiny Palestinian enclave's 2 million residents are homeless and scrambling to obtain basic necessities. If last week's ceasefire holds, experts caution that rebuilding the devastated territory will take decades and cost tens of billions of dollars. The United Nations estimates that $50 billion will be required to rebuild Gaza, which occupies an area about the size of Philadelphia on the Mediterranean coast between Israel and Egypt. Even the rosiest of estimates project it would take a decade. But other predictions are much more dire. A report issued in September estimates $18.5 billion worth of damage was done to Gaza's infrastructure from the war's start through the end of January 2024, and that once a ceasefire is reached, 'a return to the 2007–2022 growth trend would imply that it would take Gaza 350 years just to restore GDP to its level in 2022.' What is the scope of the destruction? 'At least a million people won't have homes to return to,' says Shelly Culbertson, a senior researcher at the think tank RAND. Most utilities, such as electricity, sewage, water, and communications are not working in Gaza, and the vast majority of hospitals and schools have been destroyed.There's a water crisis in Gaza that the end of fighting might not solve. Somdeep Sen, an associate professor of international development at Roskilde University in Denmark, says, 'What we have witnessed is not just the material destruction of Gaza but also the destruction of the very fabric of Palestinian life in the enclave.' A statistical measure that summarizes a country's average human development, was expected to drop to a level not seen since 1955, 'erasing over 69 years of progress' there. The biggest issue may be the most fundamental one: Where will the money come from? For obvious reasons, Israel is an unlikely source. Meanwhile, neither Egypt nor Jordan has the resources or political will to add much, Sen says. Instead, wealthy Gulf states such as Qatar may have to step in, he says. Even so, 'without a large cohort of donors committed to the long-term recovery of Gaza, reaching the mark will be difficult,' he says. The U.N. says 6 staff were killed in an Israeli strike on a Gaza school. Even without offering funding, Israel does have an important role to play, Sen says. 'How Israel chooses to implement and interpret the ceasefire agreement and subsequently the nature/extent of its military control over the Gaza Strip will determine how much and how quickly the enclave can recover.' As for funding, Culbertson, who has done extensive work on the West Bank and Gaza, says the U.S. and European Union are also likely to provide funds.For Gaza on items it deems could be used either for legitimate civilian purposes or to make weapons, Culbertson says. 'The list … is fairly wide. It includes many materials necessary for reconstruction, like concrete, timber, rebar.' Simply clearing debris will be a monumental task. Not only are there massive amounts of rubble to contend with, but it will have to be carefully handled for such things as unexploded ordnance, says Mark Jarzombek, an architectural history professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Jarzombek has studied how cities such as Dresden, Germany — which was gutted by Allied bombing in 1945 — were able to recover after World War II. War-era buildings were mostly made of brick and wood, he says. 'When those were bombed, they left big piles of that stuff,' Jarzombek explains. As a result, postwar Dresden witnessed 'brigades of women who would have wheelbarrows and go to the brick piles and then dump them in particular places.' Not so in Gaza, where buildings are made out of steel and concrete, he says. 'In other words, you can't get just local civilians … take the stuff apart. You need special equipment: You need bulldozers. You need cranes,' Jarzombek says.
GAZA ISRAEL CEASEFIRE REBUILDING DESTRUCTION HUMANITARIAN CRISIS INTERNATIONAL AID
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