Gaza is in ruins; how long will it take to rebuild?

New Delhi,UPDATED: Oct 9, 2024 17:03 IST

The last 365 days of bombing have reduced Gaza to ruins, rendering about 90 percent of its 2.2 million residents homeless. If the war were to stop right now, it would take decades to rebuild Gaza to its pre-October 7 state — the day Israel launched its military operation in response to the killing of approximately 1,200 Israelis a day earlier.

A satellite data-based analysis by the United Nations assesses that over 66 per cent of buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed during Israel’s military operations.

The UN Satellite Centre (UNOSAT) has identified 52,564 structures as “destroyed,” 18,913 as “severely damaged,” 56,710 as “moderately damaged,” and 35,591 as possibly damaged in the Gaza Strip.

More than 220,000 homes have been damaged. The war has killed more than 41,000 people in the Strip, including 6,000 women and 11,000 children in the past year, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

Reconstruction: A Herculean Task

In June 2024, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) assessed that the destruction of buildings had generated an estimated 39 million tonnes of debris – more than five times the amount produced during anti-ISIS fighting in Iraq’s Mosul in 2017.

For context, there was more than 107 kg of debris per square metre of land in the Gaza Strip.

With a reasonable level of heavy machinery, clearing debris from Gaza will take around 15 years and cost more than Rs 4,300 crore. Clearing key infrastructure services and road networks alone would take at least five years, according to UNEP’s assessment.

Then there is the challenge of finding land for dumping the debris. Around 490 hectares of land would be needed for this purpose in densely populated Gaza.

Since that assessment, Israel has undertaken heavy bombings in many Gaza cities, worsening these calculations.

The Heavy Cost Of War

According to Oxfam, more women and children have been killed in Gaza over the past year than in any comparable period of conflict in the last two decades.

Data from the Small Arms Survey puts the highest number of women killed during the anti-ISIS campaign in Iraq at 2,600 in 2016 – less than half of the deaths among Gazan women in just one year.

UN reports on Children and Armed Conflict over the last 18 years show that no other conflict has killed a higher number of children in one year, Oxfam says.

Since 7 October 2023, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have also lost about 728 troops in Gaza, and another 4,576 have sustained injuries in the war.

How Close Is Israel To Its War Goal?

Israel set out to wipe out Hamas from Gaza as its stated mission. A year on, that goal continues to elude the Israeli military. Even though it has declared that Hamas as a militant group no longer exists in the enclave, observers say Hamas still retains some operational capabilities and continues to engage Israeli forces across the Gaza Strip. Hamas has also escalated its military activities in the West Bank.

The militants fired a volley of rockets on Tel Aviv as the capital city commemorated the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s brutal attack on Israeli border communities on 7 October.

According to official figures, the IDF has killed more than 17,000 of the estimated 25,000-30,000 militants since launching its offensive in the Palestinian enclave. The figure includes members of other smaller outfits operating in Gaza as well.

However, detailed reports prepared by the IDF, which include specifics on timeframes, locations, or operations, put the number of casualties at approximately 8,500 – about half of the overall figure, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED).

As public pressure grows on Israeli leadership to bring back 97 of the 251 Israeli hostages held in Gaza, a survey published by the Israel Democracy Institute shows that a majority of Israelis now favour an end to the war, according to the Times of Israel.