Iraq News Now

'No recovery with occupation': Why Gaza reconstruction plans are riddled with holes

Palestinian architect and planner Dana Erekat arrived in Gaza in 2014, two days before the ceasefire that followed a seven-week Israeli assault on the enclave. 

She was there to coordinate the funds for its reconstruction, as the attack had destroyed 18,000 housing units and left 108,000 people homeless. 

Back then, the work of planning Gaza's reconstruction began while bombs were still falling.

"While the aggression was happening on TV screens, the municipalities were already conducting assessments of the damage," Erekat recalled. "I thought at the time we’d seen the worst of it, but it doesn't compare to what we're seeing now."

Now, after 17 months of relentless Israeli bombing, much of Gaza has been flattened, with 69 percent of its buildings reduced to rubble. Israeli attacks have killed over 50,000 people, razed infrastructure, decimated the healthcare system, torn through its cultural landmarks and left its education system in tatters.

The UN has estimated that its reconstruction would cost up to $50bn and take up to 80 years. The removal of the 50 million tonnes of rubble coating the strip alone could take 21 years and cost $1.2bn. 

Palestinian planners in Gaza have criticised these estimates, stating that the strip could be rebuilt within a few years if the international community ensures the complete lifting of the Israeli siege.

Nonetheless, experts have warned of the "unprecedented" challenges of clearing the debris, which is believed to contain toxic industrial chemicals, unexploded bombs and an estimated 10,000 bodies at least, according to Gaza's civil defence agency.

US President Donald Trump has envisioned the development of a "Gaza riviera" that would see the forced displacement of Palestinians from the enclave to Jordan and Egypt, with the territory transformed into a luxury resort, although he later appeared to walk back on his proposal.

An alternative $53bn Egyptian proposal for rebuilding Gaza by 2030 emerged from an Arab League summit in Cairo on 4 March.  The three-phase plan rejects the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, and seeks to redevelop the enclave without depopulating it. 

The initiative has gained support from the European Council but was rejected by Israel. 

Meanwhile, Gaza's residents are forced to shelter in flimsy tents on the rubble of their homes and grapple with food insecurity amid a renewed Israeli blockade on aid and electricity to the strip.

The prospect of a recovery remains faint.

An alien landscape

Architecture and urban planning have long been wielded by Israel to police Palestinians in the enclave. 

The Egyptian plan for Gaza reinforces the mechanisms for this control by preserving Israeli constructed buffer zones and raid routes - roads leading from Israeli military bases into Gaza - as highlighted by the UK-based research group Forensic Architecture.

The retention of the buffer zone within Gaza's perimeter fence enshrines the erasure of historically and politically significant neighbourhoods like Jabalia and Shuja'iyya, while the preservation of security corridors and raid routes leave avenues open for a fresh invasion.

3. Raid Routes: Over the last 17 months, we identified 13 raid routes created by the Israeli military, extending from Israeli bases east of the Gaza perimeter fence into the Gaza strip. The Egyptian master plan includes provisions for expanding these routes all the way to the… pic.twitter.com/iR1AXNYpFw

— Forensic Architecture (@ForensicArchi) March 10, 2025

The plan's proposals for housing blocks, unlike the dense and labyrinthine structure of refugee camps and Palestinian neighbourhoods, allows for easy access for military raids and for the movement of residents to be closely monitored.

For Yara Sharif, architect and co-founder of the Palestine Regeneration Team (PART), the plan fails in its top-down approach to reconstruction that excludes the voices of Palestinians in Gaza.

"Who is to decide on the future of Gaza, if it's not the Gazans?" Sharif told MEE.

According to her, the initiative is riddled with holes: "From an architectural point of view, the plan has several gaps. 

'From an architectural point of view, the plan has several gaps'

- Yara Sharif, architect and co-founder of the Palestine Regeneration Team

The way it is being designed is a one-size-fits-all approach. Not taking into account the richness of Gaza's history, monuments and the variety of urban and rural fabric is concerning. From the dense city to the unique coastal edge, to the agricultural areas, each has its specificity and identity.

"It ends up being an enforced alien landscape," she said.

Sharif emphasised that no recovery can happen amid Israel's ongoing siege of the territory.

"Gaza is still under siege, with no right to materials and basic resources. The colonisation, occupation and war crimes continue and people are still in tents with no access to sufficient clean water, electricity and aid," she said.

"The international community has a role to play to assist in lifting the siege and allowing Gazans their basic human rights,  including a right to a home, a city and building materials."

Recovery under occupation

Experts have warned the implementation of any plan for Gaza's recovery could be derailed by Israel's tight control over the territory's borders, as has been the case with previous reconstruction efforts.

"We have an ICJ [International Court of Justice] opinion that says very clearly two things: Gaza is occupied territory, and Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories is illegal and has to be dismantled immediately," former UN special rapporteur on the right to housing, Leiliani Farha, told MEE.

"And so I would think that that should also be front and centre in any recovery and reconstruction plan. I don't see that in too many of the plans I've read," she added. "There's not going to be a recovery without the end of occupation."

This is something Erekat learned quickly in her role as head of aid management with the Palestinian Ministry of Planning back in 2012. She was charged with coordinating aid and liaising between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and NGOs for projects both in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

"I've seen firsthand how challenging it is to get actual work done due to Israeli restrictions and despite budget availability," Erekat said.

'There's not going to be a recovery without the end of occupation'

- Leiliani Farha, former UN special rapporteur

A 2009 European Union-funded project for community-led developments in Area C, an area covering 60 percent of the West Bank which is under full Israeli control, struggled to get off the ground despite funding being in place.

Under the project, 32 communities developed their own plans which were submitted to the Israeli authorities for approval.

"Thirty-two plans were submitted, and over five years only two were given conditional approval because they're in Area C," Erekat told MEE.

In 2014, Erekat said that recovery efforts were stalled in Gaza as most of the materials required for reconstruction didn't make it into the strip, despite funding being available.

A Cairo donor conference in 2015 saw state donors pledging $5.4bn to rebuild Gaza over three years, although Erekat pointed out that only half of that sum was funding specifically earmarked for Gaza.

Following the conference, the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism, a UN-brokered agreement between the UN, Cogat - the Israeli occupation agency that oversees the Palestinian territories - and the PA was established to allow for the entry of restricted materials for Gaza's reconstruction.

But the agreement unravelled, with critics saying that it had worked to "institutionalise" the blockade.

"Hardly anything was allowed to get in, and we were getting complaints all the time from the UN and the donors," Erekat recalled. "I'm not sure how much got in through the mechanism but it wasn't nearly what was needed because of the 'dual use' list."

The Israeli authorities deem resources like cement and pipes as "dual use" - items that can be used for military purposes, and therefore severely restrict the volume allowed into Gaza. 

By 2016, less than 10 percent of the homes destroyed in the 2014 onslaught were rebuilt.

Disaster capitalism

Farha warned that there is a risk of private interests profiteering from Gaza's recovery, just as they did from the reconstruction of Iraq in 2003 and New Orleans in the US following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina when the residents of traditional Black neighbourhoods were supplanted by new developments.

"There is a real risk of a kind of financialised, uber-neoliberal Disaster Capitalism approach to Gaza," Farha warned, referring to a term coined by the author Naomi Klein in the Shock Doctrine, which describes the pushing through of pro-corporate measures in the aftermath of disaster.

A recovery plan developed by the World Bank and the PA in November 2024 reimagines Gaza as a "free economic zone to attract businesses and industries from around the world."

"That plan had Disaster Capitalism written all over it. I mean, it was really about bringing in investors and creating free trade zones," Farha said.

In December 2023, just two months after Israel launched its war on Gaza, US  management consultancy firm McKinsey attended an event held by the Palestine Emerging Initiative, a private sector coalition which aims to "accelerate and substantiate economic recovery" in Gaza.

And in May , Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office released AI images of its vision for Gaza in 2035 - which reimagines the enclave as a new Dubai, populated by skyscrapers and solar power plants.

Netanyahu noted that the project would involve "building from nothing".

This rhetoric was echoed by Trump, who referred to Gaza as a "demolition site".

But what Palestinians are doing on the ground - returning to their homes and installing beaten up sofas and tents on the rubble - contradicts this.

They are demonstrating an alternative recovery. One that rejects the idea of their homes as a disaster zone and reasserts their connection to their land. Far from building "from nothing", their efforts are directed at salvaging their lives from the wreckage.

In 2010, Sharif and her team went into Gaza to support reconstruction efforts, and observed that Palestinians were pioneering their own techniques to rebuild their homes, through the repurposing of debris. 

Now, as players are touting proposals for Gaza's future, municipalities and locals are leading small-scale reconstruction initiatives on the ground.

"They're trying to reappropriate ruins, and salvage what is available there," Sharif said.