Israel reduces Gaza Strip to over 42 mn tons of rubble: Report

According to the news agency, removing it all may take years and cost $700 mn, while rebuilding Gaza could cost over $80 bn.

“The task will be complicated by unexploded bombs, dangerous contaminants and human remains under the rubble,” Bloomberg notes, adding that according to the UN estimates, “reprocessing only half of such rubble would be enough to rebuild Gaza’s entire road network.”

At least 40,000 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip since October 2023; 70% of buildings have been destroyed and 2.2 mn people, cut off from water, food and medical care, have been forced to leave their homes. In addition, more than half of the enclave’s farmland has been destroyed and it will be extremely difficult to restore the agricultural sector, the agency points out.

“The cost of rebuilding will be prohibitive. Construction sites on this scale have to be empty of people, creating another wave of displacements,” Bloomberg quoted Mark Jarzombek, an architectural history professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as saying.

“What we see in Gaza is something that we have never seen before in the history of urbanism,” he said, adding: “It’s not just the destruction of physical infrastructure, it’s the destruction of basic institutions of governance and of a sense of normality.”