In October 2023, a group of Palestinians surveyed the ruins of the Yasine Mosque in a Gaza refugee camp, which had been devastated by Israeli airstrikes. According to a recent report from the United Nations, the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas is inflicting severe damage on the Gaza Strip. Even if the conflict were to cease tomorrow, the time required for reconstruction could extend far beyond decades, possibly taking a century.
The Associated Press describes the war as one of the deadliest and most destructive military actions since World War II. A report from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) highlights that if the war were to end immediately and Gaza were to return to the pre-conflict state it experienced on October 7, 2023, it would still take approximately 350 years for the local economy to recover to its pre-war levels.
Since Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, the region has been under blockade from both Israel and Egypt. Additionally, Hamas’s multiple conflicts with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank have further exacerbated Gaza’s economic struggles.
The ongoing war between Israel and Hamas has already caused widespread destruction across the Gaza Strip. Not only have entire communities been reduced to rubble, but vital infrastructure, including roads, lies in ruins. Before any rebuilding can begin, there is the daunting task of clearing away mountains of debris, as well as the bodies and unexploded ordnance that fill the wreckage.
According to UNCTAD’s latest report, “Achieving a ceasefire will not place Gaza on a path to recovery and sustainable development, even if it returns to the conditions existing before October 2023.” The report suggests, “If growth trends from 2007 to 2022 are resumed, which exhibited an average growth rate of just 0.4%, it would take 350 years for Gaza’s GDP to return to 2022 levels.”
Even under these grim circumstances, the report reveals that per capita GDP will continue to “decline sharply” as the population grows.
The notion of requiring 350 years for recovery is staggering. Rami Alazzeh, the author of the report, explained that he based his estimates on economic damage observed over the first seven months of the war and calculated the time needed for recovery using Gaza’s average GDP growth rate from 2007 to 2022.
Alazzeh emphasized, “The message of the report is that the speed of Gaza’s recovery will depend on the conditions of its recovery. We are not saying it will definitely take 350 years, as that would imply Gaza could never recover.”
As of the end of January this year, the World Bank estimated the economic losses in Gaza at around $18.5 billion, a figure nearly equivalent to the total economic output of both the West Bank and Gaza in 2022.
Additionally, a UN assessment conducted in September revealed that approximately one-quarter of all buildings in Gaza have been destroyed or heavily damaged, with 66% of structures sustaining some level of damage, including over 227,000 housing units.
The Norwegian Refugee Council, leading an international aid alliance known as the Shelter Cluster, has estimated the timeframe needed to rebuild all of the destroyed homes according to the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism, which was established in 2014 to facilitate partial rebuilding under Israeli supervision. Their report indicates that under the current framework, it would take 40 years for Gaza to fully reconstruct all damaged housing.
