The level of destruction in Gaza has not been since World War II, according to a United Nations official who estimated that post-war reconstruction could cost up to $50bn.

“We have not seen anything like this since 1945,” Abdallah al-Dardari, director of the regional bureau for Arab states at the UN Development Programme (UNDP), said on Thursday during an online news briefing. “That intensity, in such a short time and the massive scale of destruction,” he added.

More than 70 percent of all housing has been destroyed, the UN official said, and about 37 million tonnes of debris needs to be removed. By comparison, during the 2014 Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, about 2.4 million tonnes of debris were removed.

Overall, the level of destruction is such that the UNDP estimates that the human development index in Gaza has regressed by 40 years. The index assesses factors including years of gains in schooling, education attainment, health and life expectancy at birth.

“All investments in human development … for the last 40 years in Gaza have been wiped out,” al-Dardari said. “We are almost back in the ’80s,” he added.

The overall cost of post-war reconstruction in Gaza would cost between $40-50bn “at least”, he said.

The UN agency’s top priority would be a three-year post-war recovery phase with the aim of providing temporary shelters and basic services for Palestinians to be able to return to the sites of their former homes.

BOB Post