Davos:
The Israel-Hamas war has set back 60 years of development in Gaza and mobilizing the tens of billions of dollars needed for reconstruction will be an uphill task, the United Nations said.
About two-thirds of all buildings in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed or damaged, and removing the estimated 42 million tons of rubble will be dangerous and complex, the head of the UN development program told AFP.
“Probably between 65 percent to 70 percent of the buildings in Gaza have been completely destroyed or damaged,” Achim Steiner said in an interview at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting at the Swiss Ski Resort Town of Davos.
“But we are also talking about a destroyed economy, where we estimate that about 60 years of development have been lost in this conflict for 15 months.
“Two million people who are in the Gaza Strip have not just lost shelter: they have lost public infrastructure, sewage treatment systems, fresh water supply systems, public waste management. All these basic infrastructure and service elements simply do not exist.”
And for all these sky-high numbers, Steiner emphasized, “Human despair is not just something you capture in statistics.”
‘Years and years’
The fragile ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza war came into effect on Sunday.
Steiner said it was difficult to put a timeframe for reconstruction because of the “volatile” nature of the ceasefire, and because the UN’s immediate focus is on lifesaving aid.
“When we talk about rebuilding, we’re not talking about one or two years,” he said.
“We’re talking about years and years until you even get close to rebuilding, primarily the physical infrastructure, but it’s also an entire economy.
“People had savings. People had loans. People had invested in businesses. And all of this is being lost. So we’re talking about the physical and economic, and in some ways even the psychosocial phase for reconstruction.”
He said the physical reconstruction alone would cost “tens of billions of dollars”, and “we face a huge uphill battle to mobilize that scale of finances”.
‘Extraordinary’ destruction
The estimated volume of debris could still rise and will leave the reconstruction effort with enormous challenges.
“This is not an easy undertaking just to load it and transport it somewhere. This debris is dangerous. There are often still bodies that may not have been recovered. There is unexploded ordnance, landmines,” Steiner explained.
“One option is recycling. With reconstruction there is a significant degree to which you can recycle these materials and use them in the reconstruction process,” Steiner said.
“The interim solution will be to move the debris to temporary dumps and deposits from where it can later be taken for permanent processing or disposal.”
In the meantime, if the ceasefire holds and holds, Steiner said huge amounts of temporary infrastructure would be needed.
“Virtually every school and hospital has been seriously damaged or destroyed,” he said.
“It is an extraordinary physical destruction that has happened.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)