Mar 16, 2025
My old office in Gaza is a pile of rubble. The streets around it, where I went for a
coffee, ordered maftool or manakish, had a haircut, are flattened. Friends and
colleagues are dead, or more often have vanished, last heard from weeks or months
ago, no doubt buried somewhere under the broken slabs of concrete. The uncounted
dead. In the tens perhaps hundreds of thousands.
Gaza is a wasteland of 50 million tons of rubble and debris. Rats and dogs scavenge
amid the ruins and fetid pools of raw sewage. The putrid stench and contamination
of decaying corpses rises from beneath the mountains of shattered concrete. There
is no clean water. Little food. A severe shortage of medical services and hardly any
habitable shelters. Palestinians risk death from unexploded ordnance, left behind
after over 15 months of air strikes, artillery barrages, missile strikes and blasts from
tank shells, and a variety of toxic substances, including pools of raw sewage and
asbestos.
Hepatitis A, caused by drinking contaminated water, is rampant, as are respiratory
ailments, scabies, malnutrition, starvation and the widespread nausea and vomiting
caused by eating rancid food. The vulnerable, including infants and the elderly, along
with the sick, face a death sentence. Some 1.9 million people have been displaced,
amounting to 90 percent of the population. They live in makeshift tents, encamped
amid slabs of concrete or the open air. Many have been forced to move over a dozen
times. Nine in 10 homes have been destroyed or damaged. Apartment blocks,
schools, hospitals, bakeries, mosques, universities — Israel blew up Israa University
in Gaza City in a controlled demolition — cemeteries, shops and offices have been
obliterated. The unemployment rate is 80 percent and the gross domestic product
has been reduced by almost 85 percent, according to an October 2024 report issued
by the International Labor Organization.
Israel’s banning of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine
Refugees in the Near East — which estimates that clearing Gaza of the rubble left
behind will take 15 years — and blockage of aid trucks into Gaza ensures that
Palestinians in Gaza will never have access to basic humanitarian supplies,
adequate food and services.
The United Nations Development Program estimates that it will cost between $40
billion and $50 billion to rebuild Gaza and will take, if the funds are made available,
until 2040. It would be the largest post-war reconstruction effort since the end of
World War Two.
READ FULL ARTICLE HERE – https://slguardian.org/on-the-precipice-of-darkness/
