NOT one of the 19,000 homes in Gaza
destroyed during last summer’s war with Israel has been rebuilt. Six months
after would-be donors pledged to raise $3.5 billion, the situation is bleak.
Barely a quarter of the promised cash has arrived (see chart). Around 100,000
of Gaza’s 1.8m people remain homeless after families spent a rainy winter in tents,
trailers and amid the rubble.
The main reason is that Israel’s
government lets Gazans import only a fraction of the cement they need, arguing
that it can be used for military purposes—and for building tunnels. So what
little Gazans get is on the black market. “It’s like cement is a radioactive
material,” says Naji Yusuf Sarhan, Gaza’s deputy minister of housing.
The UN is supervising the flow of
material. Just one tightly controlled crossing from Israel into Gaza allows
commercial goods. Only a tenth of the 5m tonnes of materials required has so
far been let in, says the UN. At this rate, it would take 20 years to rebuild
the territory, says Mr Sarhan. To buy on the black market you need a lot of
cash. Most Gazans are poor. Half have no job.
Omar Fayyad worries that his
four-storey house in Beit Hanoun, a town on the northern edge of the strip, may
collapse and bury his family. An Israeli shell landed next door, so the columns
supporting it are buckling. “We’ve received nothing: no money, no materials, no
cement, no iron, nothing,” he says. He has rigged up a pulley system to clear
the debris, moving slabs of concrete and twisted metal into a sewage-filled pit
nearby, hoping to sell the material.
Read more : The Economist
