The Palestinian Way: Reconstruction in Gaza

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An interesting article appears in today’s Jerusalem Post about stalled reconstruction in Gaza following the 2014 war. It originally appeared 4 days ago in the Los Angeles Times and was authored by Rushdi Abu Alouf and Joshua Mitnick.

To begin with it is interesting to see how the Post changed the original headline of the story.

First as it appeared in the LA Times:

“Two years after war, rebuilding in Gaza is far from done,

and international donors are bailing”

Second as the headline appeared in the Jerusalem Post:

“Two years after Gaza war, still no homes built”

I don’t think you need your humble servant to point out that the Post headline states “no homes built” while the Times headline states “far from done.” Nor do I need to point out that the Post headline omits “international donors bailing” altogether. You are free to draw your own conclusions about the message that the Post intends to convey.

But then we get to the meat of the story.

Which begins with Nashat Nawati, an unemployed government clerk who lost his “lovely big house” in the 2014 war, and then expands into a discussion of the “75,000 Gazans still displaced from their homes” because of “3.5 billion [reconstruction] effort. . . “that has fallen years behind schedule.”

It then quickly devolves into the standard threat line that “a new war may only be a matter of time” because the “economic and humanitarian blight” may “ensure continued instability.”

And then devolves even further into blaming Israel for [along with Egypt] for a blockade of Gaza and for its excessive bureaucratic oversight over “the distribution of construction supplies.”

But then, the article takes a surprising detour into facts:

“The biggest problem, according to the United Nations, is funding shortfalls. Only about 50% of promised donor aid – about 1.4 billion — was disbursed as of the end of March, according to the latest World Bank report. Among among large donors, the U.S. had transferred all of the $200 million it pledged, but Persian Gulf countries such as Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia had transferred only 15% or less of their pledges.”  

And then, shock of shocks, we get the following description of the trip that Nawaiti took the reporters on to where his home stood–in the Shujaiyeh neighborhood that was Hamas Central:

“Nawati took a reporter to his home in Shajaiya,  a district on the eastern outskirts of Gaza City – a site of fierce fighting in 2014 because Hamas used buildings there to mask the openings of tunnels under the border with Israel less than a mile away tunnels built to infiltrate into Israel to murder and kidnap Israelis.  Swaths of homes were left in ruins.”

There then follows a series of paragraphs about the lack of building materials for which Nawati’s brother blames Israel, but the article states: 

“The lack of building materials and restrictions on generators and heavy machinery  are also hobbling the rebuilding. The Israeli human rights nonprofit Gisha said that from the end of the war through the end of 2015, only about 14% of the construction materials needed to rebuild Gaza made it through to the area.  

Israeli officials say the restrictions are designed to prevent Hamas from rebuilding its military infrastructure in Gaza, especially the cross-border tunnels used to infiltrate southern Israel during the 2014 war.  The director general of Israel’s foreign ministry in May accused Hamas of diverting 95% of cement shipments destined for rebuilding.”

Finally, the article concludes with these surprising and not-so-surprising paragraphs:

 “Gazans blame everyone for the bleak state of affairs: the Israeli military, which keeps the territory under a strict blockade; Arab governments, which have not sent pledged aid on time; and even their own leaders.