European and Arab nations, Canada and the US appear willing to contribute to the estimated $70 billion needed to rebuild Gaza, a UN official has said.
The two-year war there had produced rubble equal to 13 times the pyramids of Giza, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) official Jaco Cilliers said yesterday.
Israel’s war against Hamas had generated at least 55 million tonnes of rubble and that it could take decades for Gaza to fully recover, he said.
“We’ve heard very positive news from a number of our partners, including European partners... Canada” regarding their willingness to help, he told a Press conference in Geneva, adding that there were also discussions with the United States.
Since a ceasefire deal came into effect in Gaza, large numbers of Palestinians have returned to the ruins of their homes in the coastal territory.
Huge swathes of Gaza have been reduced to a wasteland by Israeli bombardment over two years that killed more than 68,000 people, according to Gaza health authorities.
A large part of the destruction is in Gaza City, scene of some of the fiercest fighting. About 83 per cent of all building structures there have been damaged, according to the United Nations Satellite Centre.
UNDP said it had already cleared some 81,000 tonnes of rubble from the Gaza Strip and was continuing to do so.
Hamas freed the last living Israeli hostages from Gaza on Monday under the ceasefire deal and Israel sent home busloads of Palestinian detainees, as US President Donald Trump declared the end of the two-year-long war.
Trump yesterday said that the phase two of the ceasefire deal had begun. Hamas must disarm or the group will be disarmed, he added.
“If they don’t disarm, we will disarm them. And it will happen quickly and perhaps violently,” Trump said during a meeting with Argentine President Javier Milei.
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