KHAN YOUNIS, gaza strip — In almost every way, the Gaza Strip is much worse off now than before last summer’s war between Israel and Hamas. Scenes of misery are one of the few things in abundance in the battered coastal enclave.
Reconstruction of the tens of thousands of homes damaged or destroyed in the hostilities has barely begun, almost six months after the cease-fire. At current rates, it will take decades to rebuild what was destroyed.
The economy is in deep recession; pledges of billions of dollars of aid have not been honored; and the Islamist militant movement Hamas, which controls the enclave, refuses to loosen its grip and is preparing again for war.
Diplomats, aid workers and residents warn of a humanitarian crisis and escalation of violence.
“After every war, we say it cannot get worse, but I will say this time is the worst ever,” said Omar Shaban, a respected Gaza economist. “There is no sign of life. Trade. Import. Export. Reconstruction. Aid? Dead. I’m not exaggerating when I tell my friends abroad: Gaza could collapse, maybe soon.”
At night, Gaza twinkles with thousands of campfires. Electricity is available only six hours a day.
About 10,000 Gaza residents are sleeping on the floors of United Nations-run schools. Many more are living in caravans or tents, or huddling in their bombed-out apartments. All told, 100,000 people remain displaced.
“He went blue,” said Moeen Khassi, the grandfather of a 5-month-old who died in his sleep in freezing temperatures in a gutted home near the former front lines. The family blamed the cold.
The 50-day war between Israel and Hamas, a group that Israel and the United States consider a terrorist organization, left more than 2,100 Palestinians dead, almost 70 percent of them civilians, according to the United Nations. Israel says half of the Palestinian dead were militants. Seventy-two Israelis were killed, most of them soldiers.
Cash assistance from the United Nations to displaced refugee families has stopped. The program ran out of money last month.
The leader of Israel’s Labor Party, Isaac Herzog, said at a global security conference in Munich last weekend that Gaza is “a powder keg” that could “explode at any minute.”
In exchange for demilitarization, Herzog said Gaza needs a kind of “mini-Marshall Plan” akin to the U.S. program that rebuilt the ravaged economies of Europe after World War II.
With fanfare, donors promised in October at a conference in Cairo to give $5.4 billion to the Palestinians, much of it for reconstruction. Virtually none of the pledges has been honored, according to U.N. officials in Gaza.
One reason for the reluctance to deliver funds is Hamas, which retains control of Gaza and its 1.8 million residents.
In joining a “unity government” last year, the militant organization agreed to allow President Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, the moderate government based in the West Bank, to return to Gaza. In the months since the summer war, Hamas has rid itself of many of the responsibilities of governing but not its grip on power.
Hamas security forces still exert control on their side of the three trade and travel crossings between Israel, Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Journalists arriving from Israel still must have their papers stamped and their permits approved by Hamas cadres. Abbas and his Palestinian Authority, on the other hand, have failed to assert themselves. The prime minister of the unity government has visited Gaza once since the war, for barely a day.
The strip is by turns moribund and seething. Residents blame their dueling governments for inaction, as well as the United Nations, Egypt and Israel.
100,000
Gazans who remain displaced six months after the cease-fire with Israel
10,000
Gaza residents who sleep on the floors of United Nations-run schools
2,100
Palestinians who died in the 50-day war between Israel and Hamas
