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Al Jazeera English · 2026-09-23
Interviewed live from Cairo on Al Jazeera English on 23 September 2026, hours after a new Gaza reconstruction plan was announced, Omar Shaban argues that plans are not what Gaza lacks: some thirty have been drafted, and none answers who will pay. With Israel holding about 70 percent of the Strip, two million people confined to the remaining 30 percent and killing continuing despite the October 2025 ceasefire, he says donors have made clear they will not fund reconstruction without a political path and a settled governance structure — and that today’s competing crises, from Ukraine to the Gulf, leave far less money on the table than in 2014.
Interviewed live from Cairo on Al Jazeera English on 23 September 2026, hours after a new Gaza reconstruction plan was announced, Omar Shaban argues that plans are not what Gaza lacks: some thirty have been drafted, and none answers who will pay. With Israel holding about 70 percent of the Strip, t…
Transcript of a live television interview. Al Jazeera English, 23 September 2026, Omar Shaban speaking from Cairo. Lightly edited from an automatic transcription; one name the audio does not make out is marked.
PRESENTER: Let's get more on this with Omar Shaban. He's director of the Gaza-based think tank PalThink for Strategic Studies and the founder of Palestinian Groups for Amnesty International. He joins me now live from Cairo. Thank you for taking the time to speak to us, Omar. So let's start with what you make of what's been announced today. Does it look like a realistic starting point, at least for rebuilding Gaza?
OMAR SHABAN: Good evening to you and to your audience. This is not new. There are thirty plans. Thirty plans have been prepared under the title "Gaza Reconstruction". Some of these plans were done by the domestic authority, some of the others by NGOs. All the plans didn't answer the key question: who's going to fund this plan? We have so many plans. Everybody talks about reconstruction of Gaza, but the reality is totally different. The war is continuing. 1,500 people were killed since the 10th of October last year, when the ceasefire was signed in Sharm el-Sheikh. The war continues. Israel controls 70 percent — 70 percent — of the Gaza Strip, which is already a very tiny place. Two million people are squeezed into 30 percent of Gaza. 30 percent means 108 square kilometres. If you deduct the area for rubble, buildings, houses, roads, Gaza lives on 60 square kilometres. The average density in Gaza is 30,000 people per square kilometre. If you compare it to India or to America, it's a huge difference; in America, only 200 people in every square kilometre. The war continues. The committee is in Cairo. The ceasefire was established on the 15th of January. The problem in presenting these ideas to the world is that it makes people feel — makes the world feel — that there is a ceasefire. There's not. We should talk about the ceasefire. We should talk about stability.
PRESENTER: Just to be clear, Omar, you're arguing that the problem is not a lack of reconstruction programmes — there are plenty of plans — but we're still unclear on the issue of who pays and who decides. So you don't feel that we've got the answers to those questions?
OMAR SHABAN: No country till now has pledged any money. Ten years ago, at the reconstruction of Gaza in 2014, Gaza was the only place, so everybody hurried up to help Gaza. I remember the Emir of Qatar visited Gaza, and Qatar and other countries pledged so much money to build Gaza. But now we have another problem. We have Ukraine, we have Syria, we have Lebanon, and we have some Gulf capitals that were attacked by Iran. And these countries are not ready to support Gaza, for many reasons. One of them: there is no political path. And these countries have said it clearly — we cannot donate or contribute to the reconstruction of an area where we cannot be sure that this building will stand forever, or for a long time.
PRESENTER: You make the point that financing is a major issue. Let's talk about some of the other concerns you may have, because the plan links the reconstruction to Hamas's disarmament and Israel's withdrawal from Gaza. Do you think that is workable in practice?
OMAR SHABAN: According to the ceasefire, my dear, we are in the first phase. The first phase should have ended many months ago, and we should have moved to the second phase, which includes the disarming — the decommissioning — of Hamas. Till now there was no agreement. There was a different version provided by Mr. [name unclear in the recording] to Hamas. Hamas accepts something, then they reject something else. Hamas accepted, two weeks ago in Cairo, in a meeting with the Egyptians, with the Turkish, with the Qataris; they sent the response to Netanyahu, and Prime Minister Netanyahu did not respond to it yet. So there is no decommissioning. Hamas still controls Gaza. All the countries have said clearly that we are not going to reconstruct Gaza without having a clear governance structure. It is a finance issue, but financing will come when things become clearer. My fear is, if we continue to develop plans as if we are cheating the world — as if there is something, there is peace, the war stopped — no: 1,500 people were killed in the past nine months, 5,000 people were injured, the destruction, the shelling of Gaza continues every day. Today, ten people were killed by the Israeli shelling. And there is nothing clear about what these countries will pledge. And the circumstances now are more difficult than before, because now we talk about Ukraine, Lebanon, Syria and other countries. And the Arab countries, who are traditionally the main contributors to Gaza, have their own problems; and, second, there is a problem in Europe — look at the German economy, the French economy, they have an economic crisis.
PRESENTER: Okay. Omar, thank you so much for speaking to us on Al Jazeera and sharing your views. Omar Shaban, director of the Gaza-based think tank PalThink for Strategic Studies.
Text © Al Jazeera English — archived here with attribution to the source. — Machine translation for archival reference. — Original source