Why has there been almost no reconstruction in Gaza?

Leave Dodge with something to think about:

Until this summer, not a single one of the homes totally destroyed during Israel’s assault on Gaza last year had been rebuilt.
Why?
The Israeli rights group Gisha, which monitors Israel’s siege of Gaza, tries to provides answers in a recent analysis, “Where’s the housing boom?”
The 51-day assault last summer destroyed or rendered uninhabitable 19,000 homes. More than 100,000 were damaged and more than 100,000 people in Gaza remain without permanent shelter.
A major reason for the fact that reconstruction is only just beginning is that between last August’s ceasefire and the end of July this year, Israel has allowed into Gaza just 6.5 percent of the construction supplies needed to repair years of destruction and accumulated housing needs.
But the story is more complex than that.

“Dual use”

A basic fact is that Israel still tightly regulates what comes in and out of Gaza, home to 1.8 million Palestinians.
Starting in June 2007, Israel has totally banned or severely restricted the entry of construction materials to Gaza. Since that time, Israel waged three devastating wars on the territory – in 2008-2009, 2012, and the most destructive yet, last summer.
The ban is implemented under the pretext that construction materials are “dual use” – they can be used for military purposes, such as building tunnels, as well as for civilian need.
Palestinian resistance fighters used such tunnels only to attack “legitimate military targets,” according to the recently published independent inquiry commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council into the last Gaza war.
Israel, the occupying power in Gaza, however, does not recognize any Palestinian right to resistance or self-defense.
The Israeli ban and Egypt’s closure of underground supply tunnels under its frontier with Gaza led to an almost total collapse of Gaza’s construction sector and helped push unemployment from an already staggering 28 percent in mid-2013 to 42 percent today.
Gisha says it “continues to object to the definition of a basic civilian commodity such as construction materials as ‘dual use,’ thus paving the way for blanket bans, especially when considering the fact that the ban has not proven effective in preventing tunnel building.”

Onerous

After last summer’s Israeli assault, Gisha notes, “Israel’s security establishment announced Israel would now allow construction materials to enter Gaza for the private sector for the purpose of reconstruction.”
With Israeli and Palestinian Authority complicity, the UN put in place the so-called Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism (GRM).
As The Electronic Intifada revealed in October 2014, this complicated system of surveillance and Israeli pre-approval would give the occupation authorities “even more intrusive control over the lives of Palestinians in Gaza, who will be subjected to onerous ongoing monitoring as they try to rebuild their houses, communities and lives following Israel’s summer massacre.”
Palestinians denounced the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism as a means to give international cover and legitimacy to Israel’s siege.
“It is inevitable that a complicated mechanism such as the GRM will slow down reconstruction efforts and increase costs,” Gisha now states. “The question is what purpose it serves, if any.”

Red Lines, black market

Gisha is the group that uncovered the Israeli defense ministry’s notorious “Red Lines” document which established mathematical formulas for how many calories every man, woman and child in Gaza would be permitted to consume to keep them just at the level of survival.
Gisha compares the Israeli-controlled rationing of building supplies to the “Red Lines” formulas, albeit with a “security rationale.”
“It is meant to prevent construction materials from being used for building tunnels,” Gisha states, “but it turns out that the controlled shortage created by the formula is one of the causes for the emergence of a black market for construction materials, as the army itself admits.”
The fact is that people whose houses have been destroyed often face multiple severe needs, especially given the generally catastrophic economic situation in Gaza.
As a result, many will sell the limited materials they are allocated under the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism.
For those who want to build, the process is difficult and expensive. Gisha’s report provides a taste:

A contractor whose building project in Gaza was approved by Israel told Gisha that he had to provide Israel with the location of the building, the building owner’s ID card, the building plans and the amount of construction materials required. The contractor said it took four months for the project to be approved, and he decided to invest elsewhere in the meantime. Another contractor told Gisha that each of the elements involved in the project requires Israeli approval. “The process is very complicated,” he said, “You need warehouses and supervision. These days everything is restricted and not all the companies received Israel’s approval to work. If a project like this used to take me three or four months, now it would take about seven months, and so I have to keep workers on for longer and spend more money than I would have before on a similar project.”

Another contractor told Gisha about the risks involved even for a determined builder: “To build I’d need to hire people and sign contracts with workers and with other companies. It’s not worth my while because I can’t be sure my project is going to get approved, and until it does, I lose money because I have to pay the workers I signed on.”
Even if his project is approved, the contractor said, shortages of cement could then produce further delays and costs.

More hurdle than help

Gisha notes that projects run by Qatar and major international agencies are the only ones that are currently proceeding at any scale because they have the “resources to navigate the bureaucratic process.”
But for the private sector and individuals “who don’t have the resources to navigate the bureaucracy and absorb its extra costs and delays, the [Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism] seems more hurdle than help.”
Gisha acknowledges the arguments of those who assert that without the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism things would be even worse, as nothing at all would be coming in.
The argument goes that the mechanism “sought to achieve a balance between the urgent, vital need for reconstruction in Gaza and the drive to prevent construction materials from reaching hostile entities there.”
But Gisha’s conclusion is rather more sober: “What it mostly achieved was to prove, once again, to what extent Israel exercises control over civilian life in Gaza, while largely disavowing responsibility – this combination harming a beleaguered population.”
“A year later, the paradigm has to shift and restrictions on the entrance of construction materials, which serve no one, must be removed,” the group concludes.

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/why-has-there-been-almost-no-reconstruction-gaza

Bye byes for me

Israel allowed 14,000 tons of building material into Gaza on Wednesday, the defense ministry said of the largest single shipment since last summer's Hamas terror war - despite the fact that Hamas is using such materials to rapidly rebuild its terror tunnels to attack Israel.
COGAT, the IDF Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories, told AFP that some 354 trucks passed through the Kerem Shalom goods crossing in southern Gaza carrying "construction materials," without elaborating what goods were let in.
The news comes as Hamas is working to rebuild its tunnels into Israel that were used to attack Israelis in Operation Protective Edge to lethal effect.


http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/194744#!

It’s been a year since the last summer’s war in Gaza ended and those who lost their homes during the fighting are still waiting for them to be rebuilt? To listen to Palestinian propagandists, this is the fault of Israel. That’s the conceit of an op-ed published Monday in the New York Times by author Mohammed Omer. According to Omer, Gaza is a “Gulag on the Mediterranean” still suffering under Israel “occupation” even though the Jewish state withdrew every last soldier, settler and settlement ten years ago. All the strip’s problems can, he writes, be attributed to an Israeli siege that imprisons and stifles the Palestinians living there. But, oddly enough, a slightly more realistic evaluation of their problems was to be found in a news article published by the Times the day before. The reason why not a single one of the 18,000 homes destroyed or damaged in the war has not been made habitable isn’t because the Israelis are preventing it from happening.

Even Hamas government officials concede that the Israelis haven’t stopped the shipment of cement and other building materials designated for civilian reconstruction from entering Gaza. Some of the problem lies in a cumbersome process needed to approve such shipments. The failure of international donors, especially from the Arab world, to make good on their pledges to help Gaza is also huge. But the main problem is that although homes aren’t being rebuilt, there is a lot of construction going on in Gaza. Unfortunately, the work is concentrated on the building of terror tunnels and other military infrastructure that will enable Hamas to launch another war on Israel if it suits their political needs or the whims of their Iranian allies. Omer’s argument is a familiar one. Israel ought not to be allowed to prevent free entry in and out of Gaza for people or goods. The siege — in which Egypt plays as much a role as Israel though Omer barely mentions that point — reduces the Hamas government to a “municipal authority.” But this is nonsense. The reason why the international community has no problem with the loose blockade of Gaza is that it is run by a terrorist organization.

Gaza is an independent Palestinian state in all but name, and its government believes its main purpose is to wage a war on Israel to end the “occupation.” But by occupation, it doesn’t refer to an effort to get the Israelis to withdraw from the West Bank or even Jerusalem. Rather, as Hamas tells us over and over again in the public statements made by their leaders and its charter, occupation refers to all of Israel. Their war is not a limited one but an existential conflict whose only goal is to end Israel’s existence. It maintains its tyrannical control over the strip by trying to focus public anger at the Israelis and their Fatah rivals in the West Bank. The reconstruction problem is terrible for the people of Gaza, but it also points out how the propaganda about Israel creating a humanitarian crisis there is a myth. Every day truck convoys of food, medicine and construction material approved by the joint commission run by United Nations, the PA and the Israelis arrives. But somehow that has not resulted in the rebuilding of homes since, as the Times reports, homeowners who are able to purchase the needed material resell it on the black market. That ensures it winds up being used, alone with Iranian aid smuggled into Gaza, to build more tunnels along the border with Israel or other military projects. Everyone knows that the joint monitoring system has failed to stop the use of international aid for Hamas terror projects. Meanwhile, as the Times notes, 37,000 tons of cement allowed in by Israel sits unused in warehouses. This is largely due to Hamas incompetence and the fact that the Arab world is dubious of sending money to Gaza that won’t be used to help people.

This is a tragedy, but sympathy for suffering Palestinians and criticism of Israel won’t make anything better for them. Had the Palestinians used the Israeli withdrawal to build a free society and their economy, it might have thrived. Instead, the bloody Hamas coup enabled the terror group to transform the strip. But instead of a prison, it is a terror fortress. Last summer, Israeli fire destroyed many Palestinian homes. But that happened because Gaza’s government fired thousands of rockets at Israeli cities and towns and used their tunnels to launch terror raids while turning down cease-fire offers until their appetite for creating misery was sated. Instead of defending Palestinians, Hamas used the people and homes of Gaza were to shield terrorists. There were plenty of shelters there, but they are still for Hamas’s bombs, not the people. There is plenty of excavation going on, but it is not for the purpose of digging foundations for new homes but for tunnels that will be used to facilitate kidnapping and murder of Israelis. If demands by so-called human rights groups for granting Gaza an open border, it would result in the strip becoming even more of a military menace both to Israel and Egypt, not freedom for its people.

As the Times reports in a separate article, across the border in the Israeli towns and agricultural villages that faced constant terror attacks, there is a determination not to let Hamas win. Instead of fleeing a clearly dangerous place, Israelis are moving in and building homes demonstrating their determination to survive. Meanwhile, Israel continues to pour more money into efforts that will shield their people from harm in the form of terror rockets instead of staking them out as human shields as Hamas does. The problems of Gaza will only be solved when it is run by leaders that value the lives and the property of their people as much as the Israelis do. With Iran looking to invest some of the vast wealth that will come to it under the nuclear deal in aiding Hamas, there is little doubt there will be more bunkers and tunnels built in Gaza but few homes. Instead of blaming Israel for what is happening in lands they’ve already given up in the hope of peace, it’s time for the international community to focus on the real problem. When they are no longer under the thumb of a group that is obsessed with an ideology of hate that prompts them to fight for Israel’s destruction, the Palestinians will rebuild Gaza and there will be no more danger of another war.


https://www.commentarymagazine.com/2015/08/25/rebuild-gaza-hamas/

Cuchulain wrote:Israel allowed 14,000 tons of building material into Gaza on Wednesday, the defense ministry said of the largest single shipment since last summer's Hamas terror war - despite the fact that Hamas is using such materials to rapidly rebuild its terror tunnels to attack Israel.
COGAT, the IDF Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories, told AFP that some 354 trucks passed through the Kerem Shalom goods crossing in southern Gaza carrying "construction materials," without elaborating what goods were let in.
The news comes as Hamas is working to rebuild its tunnels into Israel that were used to attack Israelis in Operation Protective Edge to lethal effect.


http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/194744#!

A drop in the ocean for what is really needed and anyway the article doesn'e elobarate on what goods were let in. Can you clarify exactly what was let in?

Cuchulain wrote:It’s been a year since the last summer’s war in Gaza ended and those who lost their homes during the fighting are still waiting for them to be rebuilt? To listen to Palestinian propagandists, this is the fault of Israel. That’s the conceit of an op-ed published Monday in the New York Times by author Mohammed Omer. According to Omer, Gaza is a “Gulag on the Mediterranean” still suffering under Israel “occupation” even though the Jewish state withdrew every last soldier, settler and settlement ten years ago. All the strip’s problems can, he writes, be attributed to an Israeli siege that imprisons and stifles the Palestinians living there. But, oddly enough, a slightly more realistic evaluation of their problems was to be found in a news article published by the Times the day before. The reason why not a single one of the 18,000 homes destroyed or damaged in the war has not been made habitable isn’t because the Israelis are preventing it from happening.

Even Hamas government officials concede that the Israelis haven’t stopped the shipment of cement and other building materials designated for civilian reconstruction from entering Gaza. Some of the problem lies in a cumbersome process needed to approve such shipments. The failure of international donors, especially from the Arab world, to make good on their pledges to help Gaza is also huge. But the main problem is that although homes aren’t being rebuilt, there is a lot of construction going on in Gaza. Unfortunately, the work is concentrated on the building of terror tunnels and other military infrastructure that will enable Hamas to launch another war on Israel if it suits their political needs or the whims of their Iranian allies. Omer’s argument is a familiar one. Israel ought not to be allowed to prevent free entry in and out of Gaza for people or goods. The siege — in which Egypt plays as much a role as Israel though Omer barely mentions that point — reduces the Hamas government to a “municipal authority.” But this is nonsense. The reason why the international community has no problem with the loose blockade of Gaza is that it is run by a terrorist organization.

Gaza is an independent Palestinian state in all but name, and its government believes its main purpose is to wage a war on Israel to end the “occupation.” But by occupation, it doesn’t refer to an effort to get the Israelis to withdraw from the West Bank or even Jerusalem. Rather, as Hamas tells us over and over again in the public statements made by their leaders and its charter, occupation refers to all of Israel. Their war is not a limited one but an existential conflict whose only goal is to end Israel’s existence. It maintains its tyrannical control over the strip by trying to focus public anger at the Israelis and their Fatah rivals in the West Bank. The reconstruction problem is terrible for the people of Gaza, but it also points out how the propaganda about Israel creating a humanitarian crisis there is a myth. Every day truck convoys of food, medicine and construction material approved by the joint commission run by United Nations, the PA and the Israelis arrives. But somehow that has not resulted in the rebuilding of homes since, as the Times reports, homeowners who are able to purchase the needed material resell it on the black market. That ensures it winds up being used, alone with Iranian aid smuggled into Gaza, to build more tunnels along the border with Israel or other military projects. Everyone knows that the joint monitoring system has failed to stop the use of international aid for Hamas terror projects. Meanwhile, as the Times notes, 37,000 tons of cement allowed in by Israel sits unused in warehouses. This is largely due to Hamas incompetence and the fact that the Arab world is dubious of sending money to Gaza that won’t be used to help people.

This is a tragedy, but sympathy for suffering Palestinians and criticism of Israel won’t make anything better for them. Had the Palestinians used the Israeli withdrawal to build a free society and their economy, it might have thrived. Instead, the bloody Hamas coup enabled the terror group to transform the strip. But instead of a prison, it is a terror fortress. Last summer, Israeli fire destroyed many Palestinian homes. But that happened because Gaza’s government fired thousands of rockets at Israeli cities and towns and used their tunnels to launch terror raids while turning down cease-fire offers until their appetite for creating misery was sated. Instead of defending Palestinians, Hamas used the people and homes of Gaza were to shield terrorists. There were plenty of shelters there, but they are still for Hamas’s bombs, not the people. There is plenty of excavation going on, but it is not for the purpose of digging foundations for new homes but for tunnels that will be used to facilitate kidnapping and murder of Israelis. If demands by so-called human rights groups for granting Gaza an open border, it would result in the strip becoming even more of a military menace both to Israel and Egypt, not freedom for its people.

As the Times reports in a separate article, across the border in the Israeli towns and agricultural villages that faced constant terror attacks, there is a determination not to let Hamas win. Instead of fleeing a clearly dangerous place, Israelis are moving in and building homes demonstrating their determination to survive. Meanwhile, Israel continues to pour more money into efforts that will shield their people from harm in the form of terror rockets instead of staking them out as human shields as Hamas does. The problems of Gaza will only be solved when it is run by leaders that value the lives and the property of their people as much as the Israelis do. With Iran looking to invest some of the vast wealth that will come to it under the nuclear deal in aiding Hamas, there is little doubt there will be more bunkers and tunnels built in Gaza but few homes. Instead of blaming Israel for what is happening in lands they’ve already given up in the hope of peace, it’s time for the international community to focus on the real problem. When they are no longer under the thumb of a group that is obsessed with an ideology of hate that prompts them to fight for Israel’s destruction, the Palestinians will rebuild Gaza and there will be no more danger of another war.


https://www.commentarymagazine.com/2015/08/25/rebuild-gaza-hamas/

For a start Gaza is considered occupied on the basis that they control what goes in and what goes out. It controls their water supplies, their energy needs and almost all other essential that they need.

And the NY Times is just a mouthpiece of Rupert Murdoch who has interests in the occupied territories in the Golan Heights where he is part of a consortium granted drilling rights by Israel to Dick Cheney, the Rothchilds and Murdoch.

A local subsidiary of the New York-listed company Genie Energy — which is advised by former vice president Dick Cheney and whose shareholders include Jacob Rothschild and Rupert Murdoch — will now have exclusive rights to a 153-square mile radius in the southern part of the Golan Heights.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/israel-grants-golan-heights-oil-license-2013-2#ixzz3jy5Tf7Ul

He's got to be seen to be on the right side.

So again you cannot debate the points and go off the source, never laughed so much in all my life Irn at your pathetic attempts to defend your views. So you do not like the source, Sassy's happens to be in no way realiable, but thats okay to you. You see how you make yourself look silly?

You are wrong on Gaza being occupied and clearly do not understand again international law. I had this debate with Zack and he had no answer when i proved it is not occupied. There is no occupying army and I do not see you declare Eygpt is occupying Gaza, hence

the absurdity of the left wingers who arfe desperate to back Hamas and their terrorism.

You see this is what some of the left do when talking about Israel, they try to deligitimize.

So everytime you do this Irn I am just not even going to bother replying but laugh at you, because as seen you are runniing scared from the facts. Both you and sassy excuse hamas not building any bomb shelters which would save lives. You excuse how they have used the materials sent to build tunnels to attack Israel and even show them off. You both fail to condemn hamas for doing nothing for the people of Gaza and at everyturn you both look to excuse Hamas. We have seen Sassy supports them as freedom fighters which means she does not believe Israel should exist. I have immortalized her answers and views on suicide bombers. They were rightly worthy of being printed in the press to see how some of the left back extremists.

I love Didge's automatic defence of Isrsel and Zionism.

Fuzzy Zack wrote:I love Didge's automatic defence of Isrsel and Zionism.

Hilarious illogical statemnt
Make accusations without refuting a singlle point.
You really are quite brainwashed it seems, which is no surpirse being as you are religious of course lol
To defend Zionism means I defend its ideals, which i do not.
I defend against poor accusations/lies/fabrications, where as seen here Hamas has failed to rebuild a single property, even though they have received countless materials. Where instead they build tunnels to attack Israel thus proving you fail to again to condemn Hamas and instead look to blame Israel.
There would be no blockade either if not for Hamas continued attacks on Israel
All of which you ignore of course.
But then its easy for me to expose your hypocrisy.
So again how am I defending Zionism here?

Its the bog standard answer from Islamists, left wing extremists and terrorists supporters.
Most rational people debate over this issue not deflect as you constantly do.