UN Development Program Administrator Achim Steiner addressed the task of reconstruction in Gaza, in an interview with Deutsche Welle yesterday in Davos, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum.
Steiner said, “We put an estimate of 60-plus years of development lost. Sixty-seven percent of the infrastructure is either damaged or destroyed. We are dealing with a situation where most Gazans will return to either a heavily damaged building they cannot move into, or simply a pile of rubble. That rubble is still dangerous. Not only are there potentially bodies that have never been evacuated, there is also unexploded ordnance, landmines. It’s an extremely toxic environment.”