Gaza – Ma’an – Several reports have been issued by international institutions and experts on the issue of post-war reconstruction, including their vision for dealing with the disasters and effects imposed by the war on the ground in the Gaza Strip, from the destruction of infrastructure, the cessation of education, the near-total destruction of the health system, and the shutdown of water and electricity networks, in addition to the humanitarian disasters left by the war, including huge numbers of orphaned and missing children under the rubble, and displaced people in conditions lacking the minimum conditions of life.

In the presence of such reports, it was important to reflect the local community’s vision of this process in a clear and direct manner. For this purpose, the Social and Economic Policies Observatory (the Observatory) worked to establish a research group of specialists and researchers in the Gaza Strip, who lived through the various wars on Gaza during the past fifteen years and followed up on m
any reconstruction operations and their mechanisms, which often faltered.

This group will produce a set of policy papers, in an attempt to outline the features of a rapid response in the short term on the one hand, and to plan the form of interventions directed towards recovery and reconstruction in the medium and long term on the other hand, based on visions presented from within Gaza, in order to avoid two issues: First: avoiding erroneous recommendations that may contribute to wrong and complex interventions in the future, and second: that erroneous recommendations do not indirectly contribute to supporting Israel’s strategy of disrupting the reconstruction process by making it a slow and boring process, and turning it into a tool of punishment for the people of Gaza that drives them to frustration, such as saying that removing the rubble alone may take 15 years.

The first paper in this series will be published under the title ‘The rubble resulting from the 2023 war in the Gaza Strip: Does it really need
15 years?’, prepared by Engineer Asem Nabeeh, who is currently in the Strip and is actively working with the emergency committees in Gaza, which has accumulated practical experience in the subject of reconstruction, which he presented in this paper, which technically discussed the rubble removal operations, which are considered one of the most difficult challenges facing reconstruction efforts, as estimates indicated the accumulation of more than 35 million tons in all governorates of the Gaza Strip, which is a huge amount of rubble compared to previous wars, in addition to the lack of sufficient heavy machinery and the presence of unexploded materials and bombs that may affect the duration of rubble removal if there is no well-thought-out strategic plan.

The paper argues primarily against the claims of international organizations about the need for 15 years to remove the rubble, as Nabeel considered this proposal illogical. If we consider that the maximum capacity of the companies that will be assigned to t
he rubble removal process will only use 100 trucks, according to the UN report that estimated the reconstruction period at 15 years, then we believe that this process will need more than 20 years. However, according to the paper, if this task is assigned to local, regional and international companies that use local labor and use an average capacity of 1000-1500 trucks with long working hours, then this process can be completed in one year. Also, rubble removal and reconstruction are parallel processes, not consecutively, meaning that the reconstruction process does not stop until the rubble removal phase is completely completed. In order for this process to be completed, any agreement regarding the reconstruction process must ensure the facilitation of the full entry of equipment and companies into the Gaza Strip without “Israeli” obstacles.

Link to the paper in Arabic: The rubble resulting from the 2023 war in the Gaza Strip: Does it really need 15 years?

Link to the paper in English: Gaza’s 2023 War Rubbl
e Removal: Is a 15-Year Timeframe Exaggeration

Source: Maan News Agency