Rebuilding Gaza and trying to get back to work
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You're listening to Business Daily from the BBC World Service. I'm Rob Young, and today we're looking at the huge job of rebuilding Gaza and its people's livelihoods.
Akram crouches over a makeshift stove, brewing tea in the tent he now calls home. He's one of nearly one and a half million people still displaced by the war between Israel and Hamas. As Akram sips his tea, he and his grandchildren stare at a photo of the house they lost, now just rubble.
This is the number of evictions from about 21. 21 evictions...
This was approximately my 21st displacement during the war, from street to street, neighbourhood to neighbourhood, city to city and north to south. 21 displacements, suffering and getting to know how to move from one place to another. I spent 58 years working, building it brick by brick and getting the house ready so I could feel settled when I got old, owning a whole property, only to find out that the house was gone, reduced to rubble. Across Gaza City, earthmovers grind through piles of waste, loading it onto trucks bound for a new landfill in the south. In neighbourhood after neighbourhood, rubble stretches into the distance. Rebuilding will take years and cost billions. Into this devastation, amid a fragile ceasefire, come competing visions for Gaza's future, including one floated in January by Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, imagining skyscrapers in a new Gaza.
Let's just plan for catastrophic success. We, Hamas, signed a deal to demilitarize. That is what we are going to enforce. People ask us what our plan B is. We do not have a plan B. We have a plan. We signed an agreement. We are all committed to making that agreement work. There's a master plan. We'll be doing it in phasing. In the Middle East, they build cities like this in two, three million people. They build this in three years. And so stuff like this is very doable if we make it happen.
No rebuilding work under President Trump's Board of Peace plan has been started since the ceasefire began eight months ago. Aid agencies say they're doing what they can. The United Nations estimates reconstruction will cost over $70 billion. Mahmoud Bassesso is a Palestinian advisor to the UN and the European Union on reconstruction in conflict zones.
We know very well that the capacity of our local contractors in Gaza is very, very limited. It's already damaged. So we are expecting to engage original construction contractors, primarily from Egypt and Turkey. They are ready to take care of Gaza's reconstruction in five years only with their heavy equipment and their resources.
And their own workers as well, or would Gazans do the rebuilding work or some of the rebuilding work at least?
The priority will be for our local workers. We have plenty of people. Now, as you know, like 90% of Gaza people are unemployed. So this reconstruction will give job opportunity for the younger generation. And also the workers in Gaza, very, very skilled labor force in the construction. So the priority will be for Gaza people to reconstruct their country.
What is your vision for what Gaza would look like once it is rebuilt?
People in Gaza, they are looking for a modest life. They don't want to live in luxury. They don't want to have skyscrapers in Gaza. They just want to live in dignity and peace like other people in the world. We are learning from different experiences.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–5:10
2
What is the current situation in Gaza after the conflict?
5:10–6:55
3
How are people in Gaza coping with displacement?
6:55–11:58
4
What are the plans for rebuilding Gaza's infrastructure?
11:58–17:52
5
What challenges do local contractors face in reconstruction?
17:52–19:26