“Israel has bombed much of Gaza to rubble. What would it take to rebuild?”
An interactive article posted on 10/6/24 in the Washington Post (Free Link) asks what it would take to rebuild Gaza. The article says it would be “a monumental task that could take decades.”
Gaza is a tableau of ruin. A year of relentless war has damaged or destroyed most homes and businesses, schools and hospitals, mosques and churches.
And there is no end in sight. Nearly 2 million Palestinians remain displaced, tormented by hunger and disease. Rebuilding Gaza, whenever calm returns, will be a monumental task that could take decades.
The article points out that in 2008, 2014 and 2021, areas of Gaza “were damaged by Israeli bombings during conflicts with Hamas.”
But the length and intensity of Israel’s latest operation — launched in response to Hamas’s deadly Oct. 7 cross-border attack — has resulted in what the United Nations calls an unprecedented scale of destruction.
Israeli shelling and airstrikes have damaged more than 65 percent of structures in Gaza, including an estimated 227,591 homes, and more than 10,000 bodies are feared buried beneath the collapsed buildings.
The article says there are three phases to any rebuilding: “addressing immediate humanitarian needs, clearing the rubble and, finally, rebuilding.”
PHASE ONE Sustaining life
With most of Gaza laid to waste, there are few safe places for displaced families to shelter. Some are living in tents, others in hollowed out buildings, and a small number in the structures still intact.
In the first phase of reconstruction, Palestinians would need to be moved to temporary housing as damaged buildings are razed and rebuilt. But much of Gaza’s humanitarian infrastructure has been destroyed during the war.
The article points out that “after Hamas attacked Israel last October, Israeli authorities sealed off Gaza for around two weeks, severely limiting the amount of aid that could enter.”
Even with the reopening of some crossings, restrictions have continued, leaving hundreds of thousands of people on the brink of starvation.
Even if more aid is allowed in, almost 70 percent of Gaza’s road network has been damaged.
PHASE TWO The clearing process
In this phase, “efforts would shift toward clearing the vast amounts of rubble and munitions.”
The Mines Advisory Group estimates tens of thousands of unexploded ordnances (UXOs) remain in Gaza. And removing a single bomb can take more than a month.
The process requires technicians who are familiar with dismantling sophisticated weapons. Bombs could be deeply buried in large piles of rubble. Experts would have to dig a shaft down to the munition before defusing it.
As one team looks for explosives, other teams will be clearing the thousands of bodies believed to be buried underneath. the rubble, and “it will take time to identify the remains and properly bury them.”
The article says that as of July 2024, the war had produced an estimated 990 million cubic feet of debris, 14 times more debris than all major conflicts in Gaza combined since 2008.
There is little room to dispose of it in one of the most densely packed places in the world, and the United Nations estimates it would take 15 years to remove.
The article says “Toxic dust and debris from the wars in 2008 and 2014 caused long-term health problems. Such toxic byproducts from this war are likely to pollute Gaza’s already limited water supply.” Moreover,
waste is accumulating at more than 140 temporary dumping sites, which could further increase serious health problems such as respiratory and diarrheal illnesses.
However, one way of dealing with the waste is that some rubble could be crushed and used to repave roads.
PHASE Three - Rebuilding
In the rebuilding phase, “reconstruction crews would focus on critical infrastructure, such as desalination plants, hospitals and power facilities.”
A vast amount of building material would have to be brought in through Gaza’s heavily controlled border crossings. In the past, Israel put restrictions on key materials that it said could also be used by militants to make weapons.
The article offers this surprising statistic: If the pace of reconstruction mirrors previous conflicts, the United Nations estimates it will take 80 years to rebuild all of Gaza’s destroyed homes.
The article also cautions that while organizations have begun to consider what postwar Gaza could look like, it depends on “what the international community is willing to pay for — and what Israel will allow.”
Meanwhile, Palestinians remain trapped by bombardment, surrounded by growing destruction. A manmade humanitarian crisis has turned Gaza into the abyss.
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UPDATE: Scroll through the article to see the illustrations.
UPDATE 2: This comment added by DrSocMama describes the impact of war and reconstruction on the climate and agriculture in Gaza:
Don’t forget the amount of CO2 and other GHG that are going to be expelled into the atmosphere to do all of that plus the amount already expelled from a year of war. That will further increase climate change impacts into a location that is already increasing in heat and drought. Also there isn’t really any mention of the impacts on agricultural lands, which were already under stress. They have all been decimated, thus we will need to ensure food supplies and agricultural help for decades as the ground to grow food on it contaminated and most of the mature trees, especially olives, were destroyed. Olive trees take a decade to mature enough to produce fruit and need to be attended to for that entire time to make them viable fruit producers.
