Gaza: Palestinian Zayed Abu Odah watches with a smile as his four-story house, destroyed in an Israeli airstrike in fierce fighting last May, is slowly being rebuilt into a refugee camp in Gaza’s middle Was.
He is one of the lucky few. Of the 1,650 homes that were destroyed in the 11-day war between Gaza militants and Israel, only 50 are being restored, causing frustration among Palestinians at the slow pace of reconstruction eight months after the conflict ended.
“When things started moving forward, we started feeling better. In six to seven months we would be back to our homes with our kids and families,” said 60-year-old Abu Odah, as construction workers put the finishing touches on the first floor Was.
Abu Odah’s 50-member extended family has been living in four different homes since the conflict.
Gaza officials estimate it will take $479 million to rebuild homes and infrastructure damaged in the war. Qatar and Egypt have pledged $500 million for reconstruction in the Gaza Strip, which is run by the Hamas terrorist group.
Gaza’s Deputy Housing Minister Naji Sirhan said that only $100 million had been made available so far and that reconstruction had begun on 50 of the 1,650 destroyed homes, with Qatari funds. Sirhan cited pressure from Israel, but did not elaborate.
“It is clear that the Israeli occupation is increasing political pressure and creating obstacles,” he told Reuters.
COGAT, the Israeli Defense Ministry’s liaison office for Palestinians, did not respond to a request for comment.
Israel, which controls the main commercial crossing in Gaza, has said that reconstruction would be linked to achieving an agreement to hand over the bodies of two Israeli civilians and two Israeli soldiers to Hamas.
But in an apparent bid to ease tensions with the group, it recently allowed more building materials into Gaza to rebuild homes destroyed or damaged during last year’s war.
Sirhan also pointed to the lack of broad Arab and international support for the reconstruction process beyond Qatar, Egypt and the United Nations.
“The reconstruction process is slow and does not meet our ambitions,” said Sirhan.
Israeli airstrikes partially damaged another 59,000 homes during the conflict, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run government. Some homes in Israel were damaged by rockets launched by Islamic Hamas and fellow terrorist groups.
The United Nations relief and works agency UNRWA, which assists two-thirds of Gaza’s two million people, has also helped repair damaged homes for refugees.
Egyptian bulldozers and engineers have begun work on the first of three large Cairo-financed residential projects in the northern Gaza Strip.
Sirhan said that about 4,000 families would live in the “cities” of Egypt. There was no time limit for when construction would be completed.
He said the cities would serve low-income people as well as some of those who lost their homes in cases of hardship and conflict.
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