Gaza reconstruction to cost $7.8 billion
Rebuilding Gaza will cost $7.8 billion, the Palestinian Authority said yesterday, in the most comprehensive assessment yet of damage from a seven-week war with Israel during which whole neighborhoods and vital infrastructure were flattened.
The cost of rebuilding 17,000 Gazan homes razed by Israeli bombings would be $2.5 billion, the Authority said, and the energy sector needed $250 million after the Strip's only power plant was destroyed by two Israeli missiles.
"The attack on Gaza this time had no precedent, Gaza has been hit with a catastrophe and it needs immediate help because many things can't wait long," Mohammed Shtayyeh, a Palestinian economist and a senior member of the West Bank's dominant Fatah party, told reporters in Ramallah.
Rebuilding Gaza would depend heavily on foreign aid and would require an end to Palestinian rivalry and Israel opening its border crossings.
The PA's assessment also found that the Strip's education sector would need around $143 million to get back on its feet. About half a million children have been unable to return to their schools due to damage or because the buildings are being used to house refugees. Over 106,000 of Gaza's 1.8 million residents have been displaced to UN shelters and host families, the UN says.
Fighting between Israel and the Islamist militant group Hamas in Gaza killed over 2,100 Palestinians, most of them civilians, along with 64 Israeli soldiers and five civilians.
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