ABOUT $52BN NEEDED TO REBUILD GAZA, UN OFFICIAL SAYS

Fri 10 October 2025:

Jorge Moreira da Silva, director of the United Nations Office for Project Services, has told Al Jazeera Arabic that approximately $52bn will be needed to rebuild the Gaza Strip.

Da Silva said 80 percent of the Gaza Strip’s infrastructure had been destroyed by the conflict and the process of removing the rubble was the immediate priority.

A UNDP report released last year said it could take until at least 2040, to reconstruct Gaza,

“The UNDP’s estimate does not account for all physical infrastructure. It’s just housing,” said Rami Alazzeh, an economics affairs officer at the UN Conference on Trade and Development.

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“We won’t know the true cost of reconstruction until an on-the-ground assessment is conducted. That said, we do know it will cost tens of billions of dollars,” Alazzeh said. “And the process will have to begin by clearing the rubble.”

The clear-up alone will cost at least $1.2bn, or “slightly over half of Gaza’s GDP in 2022”, according to Alazzeh.

Removing the rubble will be complicated by unexploded ordnance, dangerous contaminants – like asbestos – and thousands of dead bodies.

Azmi Keshawi, an expert on and from Gaza currently based in Doha with the International Crisis Group, explained that any post-war scenario requires regional and international pressure on Israel to allow the entry of construction materials.

“Palestinians are capable of doing the utmost in order to regain their lives,” Keshawi told Al Jazeera.

“But simply having the will to rebuild is not enough… It doesn’t just depend on them,” he said.

United Nations experts and the International Association of Genocide Scholars have recognised the genocide, saying Israel has obliterated almost every source of life in Gaza, damaging or destroying 90 percent of buildings by razing hospitals, universities and entire neighbourhoods.

After the 2014 Israeli war on Gaza, international donors pledged $5.4bn for rebuilding efforts in roads, hospitals, housing complexes, and agricultural projects.

This time, reconstruction will focus on similar areas but the overall level of destruction is greater and the situation seems more precarious.

Israel has killed at least 67,160 people and injured 169,000. Thousands of corpses remain uncounted, buried under the rubble along with the hopes and dreams of the living and the dead.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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