Israel may have failed to ethnically cleanse Gaza for the time being, but it could still do so by stopping Gaza's reconstruction after the war.
As I speak to friends and family back home, I hear about their daily struggle to find food, water, sleep, or charge their phones. Israel has damaged or destroyed approximately 62 percent of all our homes, equivalent to 290,820 housing units, not to mention the destruction of essential infrastructure like water, sewage electricity, and telecommunication lines.
"A ceasefire means I don't die today," a friend told me. "But there are a million other ways to die."
We've been left with virtually no remaining hospitals, leading to hundreds if not thousands of preventable deaths. Last week, Majed Abu Maraheel, Palestine's first Olympian, passed away from kidney failure caused by medical shortages in Gaza. Many more like Majed die every day, but their deaths remain largely unnoticed.
Additionally, not a single university remains intact. Israel has destroyed every one of our 12 universities and has damaged more than 80% of schools. Palestinian students in Gaza, who have a high literacy rate, have already lost an academic year because of the war, and could yet lose more.
Although a reconstruction plan can be dreamt up, it cannot be implemented until a ceasefire is agreed and a political solution for Palestine is reached. Both are necessary to secure the international community's financial support and a swift reconstruction process.
The current ceasefire proposal does not provide a framework or even a path towards a Palestinian state, but it does include a rapid reconstruction of Gaza and an end to the blockade in the "Third Phase".
This is part of the reason why the Israelis continue to stall: the rebuilding of Gaza means the survival of Gaza. It's therefore in Israel's interest to refuse the current deal. Benjamin Netanyahu's repeated goal of "total victory" does not mean destroying Hamas, it means the destruction of Gaza.
However, a ceasefire alone might not be enough to ensure the rebuilding of Gaza.
Will the Gaza phoenix rise from the ashes?
After the 2014 war, many countries pledged to rebuild Gaza at a conference in Egypt. However, many did not meet the pledges they made for Gaza’s reconstruction for a valid reason. They believed whatever investments they put into Gaza would disappear because Israel would bomb Gaza again.
Unsurprisingly, It did in 2018, 2021, and the current war. As the UN estimates rebuilding would cost at least 40 billion dollars, it is difficult to imagine countries committing huge chunks of money to rebuild Gaza without a political solution.
In addition, Israel did not allow rapid entry of the construction materials after the 2014 war, claiming that some might be used to build Hamas’ capabilities.
There are 37 million tonnes of rubble in Gaza, far exceeding the destruction from 2014. The importance of the rapid entry of reconstruction vehicles and materials cannot be overstated. It is needed to remove the huge amount of rubble, but also to ensure the safety of Gazans.
Bombs dropped on Gaza surpasses those of World War II, and taking a conservative estimate that only five percent of them did not explode, there are thousands of unexploded bombs in Gaza (UXOs). If denied the right equipment, many Gazans will risk death due to UXOs.
It is difficult to think about the rebuilding of Gaza without an end of the war, but we must be ready because Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza can also be achieved after the war. Israel has made almost every part of the besieged enclave uninhabitable, and it continues to target civil servants who are trying to ensure basic human services are provided like water and electricity.
Palestinian and international NGOs and the international community must work together to ensure that a plan is ready to be implemented on day one post-war. It is difficult to make assessments and plans while the war continues to kill many Palestinians and destroy entire neighbourhoods, but we must start now.
We must be ready with an initial plan if the current ceasefire negotiations succeed. We must be ready to tell Gazans suffering, and it will not go unnoticed. Let’s give them hope by having this plan and pressuring Israel to accept it.
Rebuilding the Strip is not a charity to its people, it is our task to ensure that Israel’s goal of erasing all of Gaza does not succeed because if it is gone, the rest of Palestine will follow. We must act now before it is too late.
Mohammed Mourtaja is a Palestinian from Gaza who spent all of his life in the territory before getting a full scholarship at Washington and Lee University in Virginia. He is pursuing a major in economics and a minor in Middle Eastern and South Asian studies. Mohammed has worked with the Jerusalem Fund in Washington DC.
Follow him on X: @MourtajaGaza
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