Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Slowly, a full picture of the devastation of Gaza by Israel is becoming clear. The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) released a report around the time of the ceasefire that began to lay out the numbers: Israel’s bombardment of Gaza resulted in the total destruction of 190,115 buildings and the almost total destruction of another 330,500 housing units. The constant artillery and aerial fire over the 734 days of the genocide resulted in the wrecking of eighty-five percent of Gaza’s water and sewage system. Only one medical facility remained open in Gaza City at the time of the ceasefire, with ninety-four percent of hospitals and clinics destroyed or badly damaged. In fact, according to the PCBS, Gaza is currently unlivable.

It is impossible to know the full extent of the physical and mental damage inflicted upon the Palestinian people of Gaza: the Ministry of Health has inadequate numbers for the dead and injured, and the trauma will only be known over the course of the years —if specialists are indeed able to return to the area. The United Nations reports that its entire child protection apparatus in Gaza has ‘almost collapsed’. Stunningly, the UN notes that one in five babies in Gaza is born preterm or underweight, and that in June 2025, 11,000 pregnant women faced famine conditions while 17,000 more struggled with acute malnutrition without much relief.

The Cost of Rebuilding

To rebuild the lives of the survivors of the genocide is a task that has not yet been fully understood. Gaza has been pummelled by Israel since at least the time when Hamas prevailed in the 2006 parliamentary elections. These punctual attacks by Israel on Gaza’s Palestinian population and infrastructure – including near genocides in 2009 and 2014 —resulted in major rebuilding efforts largely financed by the Gulf Arabs (led by the Qataris) and by the European Union (in 2014, at the Cairo Conference on Gaza Reconstruction, the donors pledged $5.4 billion but only spent $2.6 billion, partly due to Israeli intransigence regarding the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism).

In February 2025, the UN, the European Union, and the World Bank released an Interim Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment thatestimated that $53.2 billion would be needed for recovery and reconstruction over a decade and that $20 billion would be needed over the next three years to rebuild infrastructure, restore essential services, and restart the destroyed economy.........

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