Last year, Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza left over 2,100 Palestinians dead. The intense bombing campaign by the Israeli Defense Force, leveled thousands of homes, schools, and hospitals in Gaza.
When it was all over, and after the so-called Egyptian peace deal, the infrastructure of Gaza was in ruin. Apart from the high number of civilian casualties—the majority of which were women and children—those who survived the bombing had none of the basic living necessities.
In response to the people’s suffering, Gaza’s reconstruction conference was held in the Egyptian capital, Cairo. In attendance were some of the most powerful people in the world, including the United Nation’s general secretary, Ban Ki-moon.
The Palestinian government asked for $4 billion despite having earlier estimated the total cost of reconstruction to be over $8 billion.
However, after all deliberations and pledges, the Norwegian foreign minister, Børge Brende announced that the nations of the world had raised $5.4 billion to rebuild Gaza. Everybody clapped. All attendees deemed the event a great success.
However, a year after this announcement, just a fraction of the announced money has been spent, and huge areas of Gaza still remain destroyed. The population of Gaza still fights for daily survival. Many people do not have access to clean water, school, shelter or food.
Laura Dean, a journalist from the Global Post who was present during the pledge to rebuild Gaza, has boldly stated that the whole Gaza reconstruction conference has become a charade.
She says the pledge was done in the face of the cameras and never came from sincere hearts. She wrote: “This is standard practice for conferences of this kind, where many of the pledges are hashed out in capital cities across the world beforehand. Of course, no one wants a reconstruction conference to look like a failure. No one wants to seem stingy and unfeeling, not after a summer in which the world was inundated with images of the suffering of wounded Gazan children and grieving parents.”
The United States, for example, announced $414 million in assistance to the Palestinians; however, the US has not even given the Palestinians half of this pledged amount. Meanwhile, the US is currently giving Israel an average of about $3 billion annually in defense aid, a sum which is used to buy arms and other security equipment. The US also supplies Israel with mortar rounds and grenades.
This is not the first time Gaza has experienced this unfortunate situation. Following a similar conference that took place in the aftermath of Israel’s 2009 “Operation Cast Lead” offensive, the Israeli government routinely took more than two years to approve reconstruction projects, causing the process to stagnate.
As it stands now, there is great confusion surrounding the rebuilding of Gaza. This is because the aid was pledged with the stipulation that a new Palestinian unity government, not Hamas, would oversee the reconstruction. However, in reality, Hamas still controls the day-to-day operation of the Gaza Strip and there has been no indication that they will relinquish that role anytime soon.
The Global Post has taken the initiative to investigate why the pledged money has not been disbursed to facilitate the rebuilding of Gaza. The Global Post is hoping to send one of their senior journalists to Gaza to investigate why Gaza is still as it is. The journalist will also investigate why those who pledged to help the rebuilding process are not honoring their promises. You can help the journalist make this monumental trip by making a donation to the project via this link.
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31 Billion is the total sum of aid the PA and Hamas have received. The money finances the families of terrorists, builds tunnels to smuggle weapons, purchase of weapons, and the bank accounts of their leaders have billions.