Rebuilding Gaza could take 350 years: UN report

GAZA STRIP

Destroyed buildings are seen through the window of an airplane from the U.S. Air Force overflying the Gaza Strip, on March 14, 2024.

United Nations agencies have long warned that it could take decades to rebuild Gaza after Israel's offensive against Hamas, one of the deadliest and most destructive military campaigns since World War II.

Now, more than a year into the war, a new report speaks in terms of centuries.

The U.N. Conference on Trade and Development said in a report released on Oct. 21 that if the war ends tomorrow and Gaza returns to the status quo before Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, it could take 350 years for its battered economy to return to its precarious prewar level.

Before the war, Gaza was under an Israeli and Egyptian blockade imposed after Hamas seized power in 2007. Four previous wars and divisions between Hamas and the Western-backed Palestinian Authority in the West Bank also took a toll on Gaza's economy.

The current war has caused staggering destruction across the territory, with entire neighborhoods obliterated and roads and critical infrastructure in ruins. Mountains of rubble laced with decomposing bodies and unexploded ordnance would have to be cleared before rebuilding could begin.

"Once a ceasefire is reached, a return to the pre-October 2023 status quo would not put Gaza on the path needed for recovery and sustainable development," the report said. "If the 2007–2022 growth trend returns, with an average growth rate of 0.4 percent, it will take Gaza 350 years just to restore the GDP levels of 2022."

Even then, GDP per capita would decline "continuously and precipitously" as the population grows, it said.

Israel says the blockade is needed to prevent Hamas from importing arms and blames the militant group for Gaza's plight.

"There is no future for the people of Gaza as long as their people continue to be occupied by Hamas," Israel's ambassador to the U.N., Danny Danon, said in response to the report.