By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers
The road to recovery
In
the midst of a still shaky ceasefire, Gazans are taking the first tentative
steps along the long road to recovery. The battle over Gaza's future: Why
no one can agree on the rebuild.
Bulldozers are
clearing roads, shoveling the detritus of war into waiting trucks. Mountains of
rubble and twisted metal are on either side, the remains of once bustling
neighborhoods.
Parts of Gaza City
are disfigured beyond recognition.
The sheer scale of
the challenge is staggering. The UN estimates the cost of damage at £53bn
($70bn). Almost 300,000 houses and apartments have been damaged or destroyed,
according to the UN's Satellite Applications Program (UNOSAT)
"The removal of
rubble alone might take more than five years," he says. "And we will
wait. We have no other option."
The Gaza Strip is
littered with 60 million tons of rubble, mixed in with dangerous unexploded
bombs and dead bodies.
The sheer scale of the challenge to rebuild Gaza
(pictured in January) is staggering
In all, more than
68,000 people have been killed in Gaza in the past two years, according to the
territory's Hamas-run health ministry. Its figures are accepted by the United
Nations and other international bodies.
In the midst of such
destruction, it's hard to know where to begin.
There's no shortage
of ideas - including grand designs conceived by those with money and power in
faraway capitals. The US President Donald Trump had his say too.
But Gazans we spoke
to are sceptical of schemes drawn up abroad, and they
have visions of their own. So the fight is on to shape Gaza's future.
The question is, who will prevail?
Nihad al-Madhoun:
'[It's] about a month since we came back. The streets haven't been opened. The
water and sewage lines… nothing's been done with them.
From Trump's Riviera to the Phoenix plan
Yahya al-Sarraj, Gaza
City's Hamas-appointed mayor, is out on the streets wearing a hi-vis jacket and
surveying the ruins. Already, shops and restaurants are starting to reopen, he
points out.
"Of course it's
very modest," he says, "but they want to live, and they deserve to
live."
Gaza is no stranger
to these destructions, he adds, recalling several conflicts before the
cataclysm that erupted, following the devastating attack that Hamas launched on
Israel on 7 October 2023.
"We heard about
a lot of plans, international, local, regional plans. [But] we have our own
plan.
"We call it the
Phoenix of Gaza."
This was the first
home-grown Palestinian plan to emerge during the war - in a computer-generated
video that accompanied it, shattered communities are seen transformed, as if by
magic, into modern neighborhoods.
"We wanted to
fill the vacuum," says Yara Salem, a former senior manager at the World
Bank with 30 years of experience in conflict areas, including post-war
Iraq. "You cannot have foreign-imposed reconstruction plans while you
don't have any vision about your own country."
The publication of
the Phoenix plan in February followed 13 months of work by a broad coalition of
around 700 Palestinian reconstruction experts, some based abroad.
It drew on the
knowledge and experience of architects and engineers across the Gaza Strip,
too. Students at Birzeit University in the occupied West Bank were also
involved as the idea evolved.
Hamas, which
exercises political control over the municipalities, was not involved.
Today, the creators
of the Phoenix plan know that its fate is out of their hands, as competing
interests, in the Middle East and beyond, jostle for control of Gaza's future.
This vision stands in
sharp contrast to the glitzy "Gaza Riviera",
a controversial proposal first described in February by President Trump during
a meeting with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.
How the Phoenix of Gaza plan could look - the
designers set out to protect Gaza's existing infrastructure
Trump famously
reposted a bizarre AI-generated video on his social media account, showing
himself, Netanyahu, and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk enjoying the high
life in a kind of Dubai-style fantasy.
A giant golden statue
of the president towered over a street, and bearded male belly dancers wearing
green headbands were pictured on the beach.
Though the video was
clearly a spoof, President Trump had already spoken of the US taking "a
long-term ownership position" in Gaza.
The "Gaza Riviera" idea was first described
by Trump during a meeting with Netanyahu at the White House
"Gaza's
waterfront property could be very valuable," his son-in-law Jared Kushner
told an audience at Harvard University last year, "if people would focus
on building up livelihoods."
Trump's 20-point Gaza ceasefire proposal, agreed in October, also includes references to a
"Trump economic development plan to rebuild and energize Gaza",
alongside an international "Board of Peace" to oversee governance -
there has been speculation about whether former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair
could end up at its helm.
High-tech, AI-powered 'smart cities'
But Trump's
"Gaza Riviera" is not the only glossy vision of a futuristic Gaza
that has emerged.
A leaked document,
published in August by The Washington Post, painted a similar vision of a
high-tech Gaza Strip, under US trusteeship for 10 years.
Dubbed the Gaza
Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation Trust -
"Great" for short – the plan was said to be the work of Israeli and
American consultants, with input from members of Tony Blair's Institute for
Global Change. The plan envisaged the creation of a series of "modern
and AI-powered smart planned cities", noting that poor urban design lay at
the heart of "Gaza's ongoing insurgency."
"From a
Demolished Iranian Proxy to a Prosperous Abrahamic Ally," the plan's
subtitle read, in a nod to the Abraham Accords brokered during Trump's first presidential term,
suggesting that a revived Gaza could form part of a much larger regional peace
initiative.
"These sorts of
almost hallucinatory plans are creating an opening for disaster capitalism that
is worrying," argues Raja Khalidi, director general of the Palestine
Economic Policy Research Institute, an independent think tank ."The
state can plan… what sort of Gaza we want to build, and when we want to build
it, and how much it's going to cost us. "It has to be a Palestinian
vision - my concern [is that] we will be sidelined."
The plan also nodded
to the idea of "voluntary relocation," under which a quarter of
Gaza's population would leave the Strip, in return for a $5,000 (£3,780)
relocation package and subsidised rent abroad.
It all stands in
sharp contrast to the Phoenix plan that sets out to protect Gaza's existing
infrastructure and, where possible, restore the area's social and geographical
fabric.
The "Great"
plan stands in sharp contrast to the Phoenix plan, which sets out to protect
Gaza's existing infrastructure.
Shelly Culbertson, a
senior researcher at the US-based RAND non-partisan think tank and co-author of
a detailed study on Gaza reconstruction, also believes that the Gaza Strip is
not simply a blank slate waiting to be turned into a new version of Dubai.
'The soul and spirit of Gaza'
These are not the
only plans, however. Another, drafted by Egypt and adopted hastily by the Arab
League at a summit in Cairo in March, spoke of rebuilding Gaza over a period of
five years - like the Phoenix plan, it emphasized the importance of involving
Gazans in every stage "to foster a sense of ownership and ensure that the
needs of the local community are met".
Meanwhile, the
Palestinian Authority (PA), led by President Mahmoud Abbas, has been developing
its own proposals for the Gaza Strip, as part of a wider plan to reconnect Gaza
and the occupied West Bank in a future Palestinian state.
At his office in
Ramallah, Estephan Salameh, the PA planning minister, told me that whatever
plan is settled upon, Gaza of the future would look different, but that some
things would have to stay the same.
"There's a lot
of heritage, cities that have been around for… millennia," she says.
"It's not good practice to just wipe it all out and start over, but rather
build with what you have."
Estephan Salameh wants to ensure tight-knit
communities are restored
"Don't forget
that 70% of Gaza's population are Palestinian refugees," he says.
"And we need to preserve the refugee identity. We need to preserve the
soul and the spirit of Gaza."
For Salameh, that
means recreating Gaza's pre-war refugee camps, where hundreds of thousands of
descendants of Palestinians, who fled or were driven from their homes in the
war surrounding Israel's creation in 1948-9, have lived ever since.
Over time, the camps
have evolved, from the canvas tents and tin shacks of the 1950s into busy,
overcrowded communities with some of the highest population densities in the
world.
The PA plan is not to
recreate slums, but to make sure that tight-knit communities can be restored.
We want to have
Jabalia rebuilt where it was," Salameh says, referring to the biggest camp
that was once home to more than 100,000 people, and that is now largely
destroyed.
But for the time
being, the Palestine Authority's rule only extends to the West Bank, not Gaza.
Trump's Gaza ceasefire plan says the Board of Peace will handle Gaza's
redevelopment "until the Palestinian Authority has completed its reform
program".
A slow, painstaking process
Reconstruction is
likely to be a slow, painstaking process, one that Shelly Culbertson calls
"incremental urbanism."
"Living in the
damaged but habitable communities and rebuilding while in them, we think, is
going to be a key way of preserving communities and allowing people to move
back," she says.
"[But] some
places have been so destroyed and damaged and dangerous that the only thing to
do really is wall them off, raze them, and completely rebuild.
"This is not
going to be a five-year recovery - it's probably going to take decades."
The Palestinian
Authority's planning minister predicts a quicker timeline but says nothing can
begin until political and security arrangements are in place, borders are open
(to allow the import of building materials), and funding is secured.
But therein lies the
rub. In order for international donors to pledge the tens of billions of
dollars needed to rebuild Gaza, there has to be agreement on what a recovery
plan will look like.
Egypt plans to hold a
reconstruction summit, but a date has not yet been set. And the most likely
funders - Saudi Arabia and the UAE - will need reassurances that their colossal
investments are not simply going to go up in smoke in some future Gaza war.
But with the current
Israeli government strongly opposing the creation of a Palestinian state -
something that Saudi Arabia is also pushing for - the political obstacles are
formidable.
Israel has previously
said that it is not opposed to investors and builders from a variety of
countries beginning efforts to rebuild in areas controlled by the IDF.
On a recent visit to
Israel, Jared Kushner spoke of building "a new Gaza" on territory
still under Israeli military control, saying no reconstruction funds would go
to areas controlled by Hamas.
But nothing
substantial can happen while the Gaza ceasefire hangs by a thread, and Israel
and Hamas still trade occasional blows.
Back in the shattered
remains of Gaza City's Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, Abu Iyad Hamdouna has more
immediate concerns.
"Reconstruction?"
he exclaims. "What about water?"
After five forced
displacements during the war, Abu Iyad just wants to stay put, in whatever
shelter he can find or make for himself.
He's not waiting for
the Phoenix to rise or indeed for any sort of Gaza Riviera to materialize.
"Here we are,
making tents," he says. "We are sitting making tents, next to the
house we still cannot live in."
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