Aid agencies: Will take $80bn and 40 years to rebuild Gaza Strip

People walk past stalls selling goods amid the rubble of buildings destroyed during previous Israeli strikes, in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip. (AFP)
Short Url
Updated 18 January 2025
Follow

Aid agencies: Will take $80bn and 40 years to rebuild Gaza Strip

  • Israeli offensive has transformed the enclave into a rubble-strewn wasteland with blackened shells of buildings and mounds of debris

Rebuilding homes and infrastructure after Israel’s 15-month war on Gaza could take 40 years and cost more than $80 billion, aid agencies said on Friday.

The war has transformed the enclave into a rubble-strewn wasteland with blackened shells of buildings and mounds of debris. Major roads have been plowed up. Critical water and electricity infrastructure is in ruins. Most hospitals no longer function.

The full extent of the damage will be known only when the fighting ends on Sunday and inspectors have full access. The most heavily destroyed part of Gaza, in the north, has been sealed off and largely depopulated by Israeli forces in an operation that began last October.

Using satellite data, the UN estimates that 70 percent of structures in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, including over 245,000 homes.

Before anything can be rebuilt, the rubble must be removed — a staggering task in itself.

The war has littered Gaza with over 50 million tonnes of rubble, about 12 times the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza. With over 100 trucks working full time, it would take 15 years to clear.

“I can’t think of any parallel, in terms of the severity of damage, for an enclave or a country or a people,” said Corey Scher of the Shelter Cluster, an international coalition of aid providers led by the Norwegian Refugee Council.

The first target for aid is the health sector, with more than 80 percent of Gaza’s health facilities damaged or destroyed.

The World Health Organization said on Friday it would start by bringing prefabricated hospitals into the enclave and medically evacuating over 12,000 patients, a third of them children.


UN official: 100,000 Lebanese in shelters after ‘unprecedented’ Israeli warnings

Updated 57 min 32 sec ago
Follow

UN official: 100,000 Lebanese in shelters after ‘unprecedented’ Israeli warnings

  • More than a million people were uprooted in Lebanon during a war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2024, 75%-80% of whom were not in shelters

BEIRUT: About 100,000 ‌people have fled to shelters in Lebanon and the number of displaced is expected to rapidly increase following “unprecedented” Israeli warnings ordering people out of large parts of the country, a senior UN official said on Friday.
With war raging between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the Israeli military on Thursday ordered residents out of Beirut’s southern suburbs, including areas controlled by the Iran-backed group, as ‌well as parts ‌of the eastern Bekaa Valley, ‌after ordering ⁠people out of ⁠a swathe of south Lebanon on Wednesday.
“What we saw in the last couple of days is, I would say … unprecedented in terms of the scale here in Lebanon of the warnings, the displacement orders, and the ⁠reaction, the panic also, that this has ‌all created,” Imran ‌Riza, UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Lebanon, told Reuters.
“At the ‌moment, there are about 100,000 people that ‌are, as of this morning, in some 477 collective shelters. There are some 57 shelters that still have some space, but basically the capacity is being ‌reached very, very quickly,” Riza said.
Noting the panic and gridlock caused ⁠by the ⁠Israeli displacement orders, Riza said: “We had people moving all over the place and not knowing where to go to. So yes, I think we’re going to have an increased number quite quickly,” he said.
He noted that more than a million people were uprooted in Lebanon during a war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2024, 75-80 percent of whom were not in shelters. “This time again, the majority will not be in shelters probably,” he said.