It has been 16 months since Israel’s war with Gaza began, and the enclave is in abandoned.
Reconstructing is one of the biggest reconstruction efforts in modern history, and the question is who needs to deal with it.
The Israeli army killed more than 61,700 people and injured another 110,000, mostly women and children. Many bodies are still buried under tiled ble, up to 50 million tons.
For now, there are no clear plans for reconstruction. Last week, President Donald Trump commented on the US “take over” Gaza and forcing people to be expelled, saying that human rights groups were ethnic cleansing.
His proposal was thoroughly rejected by international leaders.
The true cost of reconstruction remains unknown
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has dropped at least 75,000 tonnes of explosives on Gaza. More than 90% of the homes have been damaged or destroyed, not to mention bombings of roads, hospitals, farms and water treatment facilities.
The United Nations estimates it will cost $53 billion to rebuild Gaza, and a UNDP report released last year said it will take at least until 2040.
“The UNDP estimates do not take into account all physical infrastructure. Rami Arazeze, Economics Director at the UN Conference on Trade and Development, said:
“We don’t know the real cost of reconstruction until a ground assessment is done. That said, we know it costs hundreds of billions of dollars,” Arazze said. “And this process must start with cleaning up the tiled rub.”
According to Alazzeh, clearance alone would cost at least $1.2 billion, or “just over half of Gaza’s GDP in 2022.”
Removing tile rubs is complicated by unexploded weapons, dangerous contaminants like asbestos, and thousands of corpses.
It is restructuring the lives of the people of Gaza, apart from physical infrastructure.
“The war situation has pushed the unemployment rate to 90%,” Alazzeh said. “Human capital has been hit badly. The children have already lost 16 months of school and people have not received proper medical care for a year and a half.”
In the first nine months of the conflict, the World Health Organization reported nearly 1 million cases of acute respiratory infections in Gaza, 500,000 cases of diarrhea and 100,000 cases of cab disease.
As Gaza’s long-term development outlook was “severely constrained,” Arazzeze said, “The pace of reconstruction has been linked to repeated destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure in the past, and “the pace of reconstruction is similarly hostile.” It depends on reopening.”
More than money
After the 2014 Israeli war with Gaza, international donors pledged $5.4 billion to restructure their efforts on roads, hospitals, housing complexes and agricultural projects.
This time, reconstruction will focus on similar areas, but the overall level of disruption is large and the situation seems more unstable.
Palestinian development economist Raja Khalidi told Al Jazeera, leaving Trump’s strange plans to say, “Telephone players like Egypt and Qatar don’t put a lot of money on the table without a political process. “He said.
In the case of Khalidi, “relieve and generate blockade [construction] Momentum will require a government in Gaza that can be accommodated by donors, Palestinians and Israelis. However, he warned that “the political consensus was our Achilles heels for many years.”
He said that even if funding approaches, the ban on “double use” construction materials that Israel enters Gaza, dating back to 2007, would hinder construction. Israel is blocking pipes, steel and cement imports, claiming that Hamas can help build underground tunnels.
Phase 3 of the Hamas-Israel ceasefire agreement stipulates a 3-5 year reconstruction process following the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces, but the chances of Khalidi reaching that phase are very slim He emphasized.
Israel has already threatened to return to the Gaza bombing if Hamas does not release three agreed prisoners by Saturday.
Hamas had announced a suspension when implementing aspects of the ceasefire agreement, citing repeated violations of Israel’s ceasefire violations.
Trump’s Middle East Plan
Israel says it will not pay to correct the damage caused in Gaza.
“Israel has rejected the idea of compensation,” said Daniel Levi, a former Israeli government adviser. “Unfairly, Israel has also been given a say in how Gaza should be run.”
The Israeli government has said it will not accept Hamas leaders in Gaza, but it said that many in the international community want a Palestinian authorities (PA) that have been revitalized to govern Gaza.
Until last week, analysts had long wanted Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel via Abraham’s agreement, making it a fragile peace that would allow Israelis and Palestinians to be accepted locally. I believed that I would strongly decorate.
But the possibility of normalization of Saudi Israel, which Riyadh has been conditioned on the creation of a Palestinian state after Trump’s proposal to ethnically cleanse Gaza, has been “kicked by the long grass,” Levi said.
“Saudi Arabia’s position on the establishment of a Palestinian state is solid and unshakable,” its Foreign Ministry said in response to Trump’s “Middle Eastern Riviera” plan.
“I’m not holding my breath at the solution to two states,” Levy said. “Unfortunately for Gaza, reconstruction is a shadowy conversation. Reconstruction is about politics and ultimately takes the balance away from Israel’s interests.”
“I don’t expect Trump or the international community to do that anytime soon,” he said.
For economist Khalidi, the solution to Palestine after the 16-month war gives us a glimpse into the future.
“If you have money [from abroad] “Not coming, the people of Gaza will reconstruct it themselves,” he said. “It takes quite a while, but they do that.”
Source link
