Media coverage
Al-Araby Al-Jadeed · 2024
The report describes the vast destruction in Gaza caused by Israel’s ongoing war and the widespread pessimism surrounding reconstruction, amid failed past experiences, a continuing blockade, and UN estimates suggesting that clearing rubble and rebuilding homes could take decades. It also highlights the debate between ambitious post-war visions for Gaza and the more urgent priorities many see as essential, including food, medicine, shelter, and schools.
The report describes the vast destruction in Gaza caused by Israel’s ongoing war and the widespread pessimism surrounding reconstruction, amid failed past experiences, a continuing blockade, and UN estimates suggesting that clearing rubble and rebuilding homes could take decades. It also highlights…
In 2014, Muhammad Abu Shari'a's home was destroyed in an Israeli bombardment, and he rebuilt it. Ten years later, his home was destroyed again in the fiercest ongoing Israeli war on the Gaza Strip. This time, however, he is not optimistic. The United Nations says the scale of destruction in the Gaza Strip resulting from an Israeli war that has continued for nearly a year is so great that reconstruction could take decades and tens of billions of dollars.
Abu Shari'a told Agence France-Presse: "This is the second time our house has been bombed and destroyed by the Israeli occupation ... It was completely destroyed and turned into rubble." This happened in October, just a few days after the outbreak of the war. Five members of his family, including four children, were killed in the bombing of the house, while the rest of the family was displaced across the Gaza Strip and to Egypt.
After the 2014 bombardment, Abu Shari'a, who was then thirty-seven years old, rebuilt the house in the same location where it had stood in the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City in less than a year, using grant money he received from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). He says, "A person puts the toil of a lifetime into building a house, and suddenly it becomes a mirage... then the occupation comes and wipes out the house and the family with a missile."
Most of the Gaza Strip's 2.4 million residents face the same challenge, as the majority of the population has been forced to flee their homes at least once, according to the United Nations, and many of their homes have been destroyed. No one knows—and perhaps no one is currently thinking, because of the continuing devastating Israeli war—where the resources and energy needed for a new round of reconstruction will come from.
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Abu Shari'a says, "If the war stops, we will build in the same place, because we have nowhere else." Even so, he wonders where he will find the energy and resources to do so.
Political analyst and former Palestinian Minister of Planning Ghassan al-Khatib says, "The pessimism stems from bad experiences with reconstruction in the past and the difference in the scale of the current destruction."
There is debate over priorities and how reconstruction should proceed, and analysts believe such planning is premature, especially since it is unclear how and when the war will end and on what terms. Brian Katulis of the Middle East Institute in Washington says, "It is like putting a piece of fruit on a cake that has not finished baking yet."
## People Are Tired of Pledges
Statistics on the damage caused by the war between Israel and Hamas have varied; UNRWA described it as "a war of absolute qualities." In May, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to housing said rebuilding around 79,000 destroyed homes could take 80 years.
A United Nations report issued in July said that clearing the rubble in the Gaza Strip could take 15 years. Omar Shaban, founder of the Gaza-based PalThink for Strategic Studies, believes the response to Gaza's previous wars in 2008, 2014, and 2021 raises doubts about reconstruction this time.
He says foreign experts have often failed to involve Palestinians in planning and implementing projects, while Arab governments failed to fulfill their pledges after promising large sums of money. The Israeli blockade imposed on the Strip since 2007 also prevented reconstruction materials from entering in significant quantities. Shaban says, "People were already tired and had lost confidence even before the war."
Despite the absence of a clear vision and the continuation of the war, Shaban remains among those proposing possible strategies for Gaza's post-war future. Earlier this year, he published an article proposing that initial reconstruction efforts focus on ten neighborhoods in each of Gaza's five governorates.
He says, "I want to create hope. People need to realize that their suffering will end," and "otherwise they will become radicalized."
Hope is also the main driver behind the "Emerging Palestine" initiative, which describes itself as a "private-sector collaborative initiative." In April, it presented a reconstruction plan that includes a port built on an artificial island made from war rubble, a technical university for reconstruction, and a corridor between Gaza and the West Bank.
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The initiative's projects also included a Palestinian tourism campaign, a film industry, and the establishment of a football team. The initiative's executive director, Shireen al-Shallah, says in her office in the city of Ramallah in the central West Bank, "When you look at some of these proposals, you think they are just dreams... even so, I believe that if we do not dream, we will not be able to achieve anything."
Al-Khatib says, "I think people should be more realistic... the urgent aspects are medicine, food, shelter, and schools." He is echoed by the boy Ahmad Saqr, who spends his time in Gaza breaking stones from the rubble of homes and selling them as gravel for no more than three shekels (about 80 cents) per bucket.
Saqr, who says he starts this work at seven in the morning until two in the afternoon, hopes "that the war will end and we will return to the old days, the days when we used to go to the sea to swim and to the mall and school, and pray and fast. The old days were sweet; we played football instead of breaking gravel."
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Text © Al-Araby Al-Jadeed — archived here with attribution to the source. — Machine translation for archival reference. — Original source