Davos:
The war between Israel and Hamas has set back development in Gaza by 60 years and mobilizing the tens of billions of dollars needed for reconstruction will be a tough 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 and 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 in the Swiss ski resort of Davos.
“But we are also talking about an economy that has been destroyed, estimating that about 60 years of development have been lost in 15 months in this conflict.
“Two million people in the Gaza Strip have not only lost their shelter: they have also lost public infrastructure, sewage treatment systems, freshwater supply systems and public waste management. All these fundamental infrastructure and service delivery elements simply do not exist.”
And despite all these sky-high numbers, Steiner emphasizes: “Human despair is not just something you capture in statistics.”
'Years and years'
The fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza war came into effect on Sunday.
Steiner said it was difficult to set a timetable 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 reconstruction, we are not talking about one or two years,” he said.
“We're talking years and years until you even get close to rebuilding, first of all, 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 has been lost. So we're talking about the physical and economic, and in some ways even the psychosocial phase of reconstruction.”
He said the physical reconstruction alone would cost “tens of billions of dollars,” and that “we face a huge uphill battle on how to mobilize that financial scale.”
'Extraordinary' destruction
The estimated amount of rubble could still increase and will leave reconstruction with major challenges.
“This is not an easy undertaking to just load it and transport it somewhere. This debris is dangerous. There are often still bodies that may not have been recovered. There are unexploded ordnance and landmines,” Steiner explained.
“One option is recycling. With rebuilding you can significantly recycle these materials and use them in the rebuilding process,” Steiner said.
“The interim solution will be to move the debris to temporary dumps and landfills, from where it can later be taken for permanent processing or disposal.”
In the meantime, if the ceasefire continues and strengthens, 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 occurred.”
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