Most of the built environment in Gaza has been severely damaged or outright obliterated, according to the United Nations and the World Bank, with the situation even more dire in Gaza City.Dawoud Abu Alkas/Reuters

The reconstruction of Gaza will require a new version of the Marshall Plan, the U.S.-led initiative that rebuilt shattered Western Europe after the Second World War. The comparison is not glib. In inflation-adjusted per capita terms, piecing together Gaza will cost the same, Middle East professors have said.

Vast swathes of Gaza, which had a prewar population of about 2.1 million in a small place – the strip is 41 kilometres long and 12 kilometres across at its widest – look like a moonscape.

“The devastation is on the scale of Hiroshima or Dresden,” says Yezid Sayigh, senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.

Opinion: The world must confront the unbearable costs of the war in Gaza

About 85 per cent of the built environment has been severely damaged or outright obliterated, according to the United Nations and the World Bank. The figure is higher in Gaza City. Water-purification systems, the electrical grid, fibre-optic networks, urban sanitation systems and farmland have been destroyed. Most hospitals and schools no longer exist or require reconstruction.

The UN, the World Bank and the European Commission put the repair bill at about US$70-billion, or almost 20 times the cost of rebuilding Gaza after the seven-week war in 2014 between Israel and Hamas.

Money talks, and countries and companies everywhere, especially in the Middle East, are sizing up their potential roles in one of the biggest rebuilding projects since the Second World........

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