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<h1 class="title" id="page-title">Gaza struggles with lack of
shelter caused by two Israeli wars</h1>
<div class="field-author">
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/rami-almeghari"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel"
datatype="">Rami Almeghari</a> </div>
<div class="field-publisher">
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/electronic-intifada"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel"
datatype="">The Electronic Intifada</a><br>
<b><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/gaza-struggles-lack-shelter-caused-two-israeli-wars/14164">http://electronicintifada.net/content/gaza-struggles-lack-shelter-caused-two-israeli-wars/14164</a></small></small></b><br>
</div>
<div class="field-publication-date">
<span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date"
datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2015-01-06T18:23:00+00:00">6
January 2015</span> </div>
<p>Since 2011, Aaed al-Athamna, his wife Asmaa and their six
children have been sheltering in a mud-brick home in the Izbet
Abed Rabbo neighborhood in the northeastern Gaza Strip.</p>
<p>They have been displaced since Israel’s three-week-long “<a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/operation-cast-lead">Operation
Cast Lead</a>” assault which began six years ago.</p>
<p>The area suffered heavy Israeli bombing and shelling in January
2009, destroying the family’s 230-square-meter cement home.</p>
<p>The al-Athamnas’ life has been similar to that of thousands of
families in the coastal enclave displaced during the Israeli
attack six years ago. The situation has gotten catastrophically
worse since Israel’s most recent attack in the summer, which left
more than 2,200 people dead.</p>
<p>“I consider myself lucky compared with tens of thousands of
others,” Aaed, a taxi driver in his mid-thirties, told The
Electronic Intifada. “At least my current home of sand and mud has
sheltered my family from the sun and winter rains, even though it
is only 80 square meters [860 square feet],” he said.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/un-ocha">UN’s
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs</a> now <a
href="http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/hno2015_factsheet_final9dec.pdf">reports</a>
that an additional 100,000 people in Gaza have been displaced and
need permanent shelter.</p>
<h2>Damaged in latest Israeli attack</h2>
<p>More than 113,000 homes, or 13 percent of Gaza’s housing stock,
were affected by the summer bombardment, with 22,000 units
destroyed or severely damaged.</p>
<p>Much of the destruction would have been caused in attacks by
barrages of <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/how-many-bombs-has-israel-dropped-gaza">inaccurate
Israeli heavy artillery</a>.</p>
<p>But Israel also deliberately targeted private homes on a large
scale, including multi-story apartment buildings, actions <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/patrick-strickland/amnesty-israel-may-be-guilty-war-crimes-during-gaza-massacre">Amnesty
International has described as war crimes</a>.</p>
<p>It is now winter and Asmaa al-Athamna spends much of her time
mopping up water and trying to keep the house comfortable for Aaed
and their four girls and two boys. Asmaa told The Electronic
Intifada that Israeli shelling in the area over the summer caused
cracks in the ceiling that allow the rain to come through.</p>
<p>“But in general, this home has proved much better than many other
metal boxes,” al-Athamna said, referring to the shipping container
homes donated by international organizations as emergency shelters
for some of the displaced. The metal containers are known for
being extremely hot in summer and bitterly cold in winter.</p>
<p>“Thank God we have a home to protect us,” al-Athamna said as she
carried on with her housework.</p>
<h2>Innovations</h2>
<p>Mushrif al-Irr lives in another mud-brick home with eleven
members of his family, also in northeastern Gaza. What’s
remarkable is that the house contains not a drop of cement, nor
any steel reinforcement bars (known as rebar).</p>
<p>“We started living in this home almost one year after the
2008-2009 Israeli war on Gaza,” al-Irr told The Electronic
Intifada. “And since then, we have been living comfortably at all
times of the year, including summer and winter. In summer, the
home feels cool, while in winter it feels warm.”</p>
<p>Cement and rebar are the basic ingredients of construction in
Gaza, but both are in severely short supply due to <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/gaza-siege">the siege
Israel imposed on Gaza</a> in 2007. The UN’s <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/gaza-reconstruction-mechanism">Gaza
Reconstruction Mechanism</a>, brokered after this summer’s
assault, <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/oxfam-finally-breaks-silence-uns-failed-gaza-reconstruction-mechanism">has
done nothing to ease the shortage</a>. Many Palestinian analysts
say the arrangement for strictly monitored imports simply turns
the UN into the enforcer of Israel’s siege.</p>
<p>Al-Irr is full of praise for the sand- and mud-brick houses.
“This is a very creative idea that has helped partially resolve
the reconstruction problem in Gaza,” he said. “I myself have been
applying for a cement home since my home was destroyed in 2009.”</p>
<p>Al-Irr, who is in his early fifties, spoke as he showed The
Electronic Intifada the spot — about two kilometers from the
Israel-Gaza boundary — where his old home had stood.</p>
<h2>Gaza soil</h2>
<p>The initiative to build the mud and sand houses has been backed
by <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/unrwa">UNRWA</a>,
the UN agency for Palestine refugees, and a number of other
international aid organizations.</p>
<p>Engineer Imad al-Khaldi, a designer of alternative buildings,
told The Electronic Intifada that he had suggested the initiative
to UNRWA.</p>
<p>“Back in 2009, I and many others realized the need for speedy
reconstruction of destroyed homes. I had long experience in the
field of alternative construction and I offered my expertise to
UNRWA, which had built several such homes of sand by then,”
al-Khaldi said.</p>
<div id="file-29883" class="file file-image file-image-jpeg
media-element file-full" height="412" width="618" style="">
<h2 class="element-invisible">mud-brick-unrwa.jpg</h2>
</div>
<p>Each home costs about thirteen to fourteen thousand dollars to
build and includes three rooms — a small family room, a kitchen
and a bathroom — al-Khaldi explained during an interview at his
office in Gaza City.</p>
<p>In his forties, al-Khaldi is the owner of the New Horizons
alternative construction company.</p>
<p>Al-Khaldi says that using materials from Gaza’s “rich” soil makes
sense. Natural ingredients such as potassium and calcium make the
buildings durable, he says.</p>
<p>“These days I am working on new ideas for using the soil based on
the fact that it contains such substances,” he said. “We’re
thinking about how to build sand bricks and walls that can be
installed and uninstalled easily.”</p>
<p>While al-Khaldi is excited by these innovations, the number of
people likely to benefit is still a tiny fraction of those in
need.</p>
<p>UNRWA <a
href="http://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/emergency-reports/gaza-situation-report-74">says</a>
that while it is providing emergency payments for shelter
assistance to 39,000 displaced refugee families, its funding for
this purpose will reach zero in January. As of mid-December, the
agency said that it was still sheltering more than 19,000 people
in its schools displaced by the most recent Israeli assault.</p>
<h2>Slow reconstruction</h2>
<p>After two full-scale Israeli assaults in 2008-2009 and 2014
destroyed tens of thousands of homes, reconstruction has barely
begun, and to rebuild on such a scale there is still little
alternative to traditional methods.</p>
<p>According to estimates by the Palestinian Authority ministry of
housing and construction in the Gaza Strip, only two percent of
the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/who-benefits-billions-pledged-gaza-reconstruction">$5.4
billion in reconstruction funds</a> pledged by international
donors last October has actually arrived.</p>
<p>The international charity <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/oxfam">Oxfam</a> has
estimated that at the current glacial pace, <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/oxfam-finally-breaks-silence-uns-failed-gaza-reconstruction-mechanism">reconstruction
could take 23 years</a>.</p>
<p>The housing shortage doesn’t just apply to the destroyed homes.
Gaza was already suffering from a shortage of some 250,000 units,
the housing ministry estimates, to accommodate its fast-growing
population which is now around 1.8 million.</p>
<p>“In our assessment, Gaza needs at least 5.5 million tons of raw
building materials, including 1.5 million tons of cement alone,”
Nabil Abu Muelik, chairman of the Gaza contractors union, told The
Electronic Intifada.</p>
<p>Yet under the UN Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism, a mere 4,000 tons
of cement has entered Gaza since October — that’s less than one
quarter of one percent of the estimated need.</p>
<p>In March 2009, following Operation Cast Lead, donors also pledged
billions to help rebuild Gaza. With the latest pledges, the total
offered is almost ten billion dollars. And yet little has gotten
through. People in Gaza are exasperated that nothing has happened.</p>
<p>“It is deplorable that such little progress has been made given
the enormous scale of needs and massive destruction,” Catherine
Essoyan, Oxfam’s Middle East regional director, said in a recent <a
href="http://us7.campaign-archive1.com/?u=d7bf98037b5abfd4c69593c62&id=1efe40b2f9">year-end
statement</a>.</p>
<p>“People in Gaza are becoming increasingly and understandably
frustrated at the lack of progress. The international community
has repeatedly failed the people of Gaza,” Essoyan added, “it must
not fail them again.”</p>
<p>“I can live in this sand-built home for ten years to come. I
prefer living here than waiting for Godot,” al-Irr said, referring
to famous play by Samuel Beckett.</p>
<p>For tens of thousands of others in Gaza, even such small comfort
remains a distant dream.</p>
<em>Rami Almeghari is a journalist and university lecturer based in
the Gaza Strip</em>
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