It may very well be that any agreement to end the Gaza war is buried under 42 million tons of rubble. That’s the UN estimate of how such debris has been created in Gaza by the Israeli military campaign. That’s enough rubble to fill a line of dump trucks stretching from New York to Singapore, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Removing it all may take years and cost as much as $700 million, Bloomberg says, adding that the task will be complicated by unexploded bombs, dangerous contaminants and human remains under the rubble.
Khan Younis, covered by an estimated 8.5 million tons of debris, once produced most of Gaza’s citrus fruit, including oranges and grapefruits. Its orchards and fields now lie in ruin—at least half the Strip’s farmland has been destroyed, leading to a collapse of the agricultural sector that will take years to overcome, according to Juzoor, a local charity partnered with Oxfam.
The situation is particularly acute in the north, Bloomberg continues. Gaza City—previously the Palestinian Territories’ largest urban center—and its surrounding areas have been extensively damaged, accounting for more than half of the Strip’s debris, Bloomberg continues.
Rebuilding Gaza, and the lives of its residents, will require a complete overhaul of its entire physical infrastructure and some form of political solution over what a new Gaza will look like. But before any of that can happen, the collection and disposal of all the rubble—after the war ends—will be of paramount importance.
