Gaza: Recycling 60 million tons of war rubble

In a modest attempt to rekindle hope two years after the Israeli war on Gaza, which has yet to fully end, international efforts are growing to transform the tons of rubble left behind by the war machine into usable resources.

The director of the UNDP office in Gaza, Alessandro Maracchi, revealed to Al Jazeera the UN program’s efforts to remove an estimated 60 million tons of rubble, aiming to clear roads and pave dilapidated streets. This is seen as a step towards delivering humanitarian aid, rather than a primary means of reconstruction.

The UNDP’s initial phase will be implemented across five main sites, utilizing crushers to remove massive quantities of debris left by the war in Gaza and reopen roads destroyed by the Israeli occupation.

A municipal official also emphasized the importance of this type of effort in restoring roads, even if only initially, explaining that more than 830 kilometers of the road network were completely destroyed by the occupation as a result of the war. But even this dreamy picture of Gaza’s reconstruction is marred by the obstacles still being imposed by the occupying forces, as removing the rubble requires heavy equipment, in addition to the continuous and successive bombardment of the sector.