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UN estimates rebuilding Gaza will cost $30bn to $40bn

A UN agency says rebuilding war-wracked Gaza will cost an estimated $30bn to $40bn and require an effort on a scale the world has not seen since World War II.

  • “The United Nations Development Programme’s initial estimates for the reconstruction of … the Gaza Strip surpasses $30bn and could reach up to $40bn,” Abdallah al-Dardari, UN assistant secretary-general, said.

  • “The scale of the destruction is huge and unprecedented … this is a mission that the global community has not dealt with since World War II.”

Source: Al Jazeera

It will take until at least 2040 to repair destroyed homes in Gaza, UN says

If the war in Gaza stopped today, it would still take until 2040 to rebuild all the homes destroyed in Israel’s bombardment and ground offensives, according to UN estimates.

  • “Every additional day that this war continues is exacting huge and compounding costs to Gazans and all Palestinians,” said UN Development Programme Administrator Achim Steiner.

At least 370,000 housing units in Gaza have been damaged, including 79,000 destroyed completely, according to a new report by the UNDP and the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia.

  • After previous wars on Gaza, housing was rebuilt at a rate of 992 units year.

Even if Israel allows a five-fold increase of construction material to enter Gaza, it would take until 2040 to rebuild the destroyed houses, without repairing the damaged ones, the report said.

Source: Al Jazeera

UPDATE

Gaza will need largest post-war reconstruction effort since 1945, UN says

UN Development Programme official estimates post-war reconstruction will cost between $40-50bn.

  • The level of destruction in Gaza has not been since World War II, according to a United Nations official who estimated that post-war reconstruction could cost up to $50bn.
  • “We have not seen anything like this since 1945,” Abdallah al-Dardari, director of the regional bureau for Arab states at the UN Development Programme (UNDP), said on Thursday during an online news briefing. “That intensity, in such a short time and the massive scale of destruction,” he added.

More than 70 percent of all housing has been destroyed, the UN official said, and about 37 million tonnes of debris needs to be removed. By comparison, during the 2014 Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, about 2.4 million tonnes of debris were removed.

Overall, the level of destruction is such that the UNDP estimates that the human development index in Gaza has regressed by 40 years. The index assesses factors including years of gains in schooling, education attainment, health and life expectancy at birth.

  • “All investments in human development … for the last 40 years in Gaza have been wiped out,” al-Dardari said. “We are almost back in the ’80s,” he added.
  • The overall cost of post-war reconstruction in Gaza would cost between $40-50bn “at least”, he said.

The UN agency’s top priority would be a three-year post-war recovery phase with the aim of providing temporary shelters and basic services for Palestinians to be able to return to the sites of their former homes.

  • The Israeli army has been pounding the Gaza Strip since October 7, in one of the most intense aerial bombardments in modern history. More than 34,500 people have been killed, according to Palestinian authorities, large swaths of the territory have reduced to rubble and famine looms in parts of northern Gaza amid Israel’s severe restrictions on supplies of food and humanitarian aid.

Israel launched the assault after Hamas led an unprecedented assault into communities in southern Israel killing at least 1,139 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli authorities, and taking about 240 captives into the Strip.

On top of the destruction, the humanitarian situation inside Gaza has been deteriorating amid restrictions on the number of aid trucks allowed to enter the Strip. UN agencies and aid groups have urged Israel to open more land crossings to Gaza to facilitate aid access and warned of a looming man-made famine. Israel has denied restricting the flow of aid into Gaza and blamed aid groups operating in Gaza for any delays.

On Thursday, US Department of State spokesperson Matthew Miller said Israel should prevent attacks on aid convoys bound for Gaza after Israeli protesters assaulted two Jordanian aid trucks on their way to Gaza.

Meanwhile, officials have renewed efforts around ceasefire and captives negotiations following weeks of impasse.

  • Hamas said a delegation is set to visit Egypt soon for further talks. The group’s political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh affirmed on Thursday that the group is studying a ceasefire proposal presented by Israel with a “positive spirit”.

Source: Al Jazeera