Source : Perth Now news
US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace has unveiled a plan to begin rebuilding the Gaza Strip but officials acknowledge it faces an uncertain future as Israel and Hamas remain at odds over terms of a US-backed ceasefire.
The $US2.45 billion ($A3.46 billion) proposal, laid out by board officials at an event during the United Nations General Assembly in New York, consists of 66 programs that would rehabilitate the enclave’s infrastructure and economy, destroyed by two years of full-scale Israeli military assault.
The six-month project envisions a partial reconstruction of the territory.
It was the latest plan aimed at advancing a ceasefire, which was announced nearly a year ago but has failed to halt Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, including one on Wednesday that killed four people including a Hamas official.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in New York: “Obviously this is a long-term project. It’s not something that can happen in six months. But it at least gives people a hope. Here’s the future that awaits you if everyone does their part.”
Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, who devised the plan while backing Israel’s right to “finish the job” in the Gaza Strip if Hamas does not disarm, acknowledged the proposal faced “different delays on different things, for whatever reason”.
“We’re just refining, sharpening the axe, getting ready for when we get to the time to cut the tree,” Kushner said.
“And hopefully, that will be very, very soon.”
Nearly a year after a ceasefire ended major fighting in the Gaza Strip, reconstruction has yet to begin with negotiators failing to agree conditions for Hamas to lay down its weapons and Israel to withdraw its troops.
Most buildings have been destroyed and more than two million residents are confined to about a third of the enclave’s territory, mostly in tents or crowded rooms in damaged buildings among the ruins.
The Board of Peace plan announced on Wednesday estimates physical damage in the Gaza Strip at $US35.2 billion and says full recovery and reconstruction will require about $US71.4 billion over the next decade.
Its plan calls for repairing border crossings, restoring electricity and water infrastructure, deploying 25,000 portable solar power kits and permanently filling tunnels beneath sites needed for priority reconstruction projects.
Nickolay Mladenov, the board’s lead Gaza envoy, said that he and other officials do not want the Gaza Strip to go back to the way it was before the war.
“We want to give people a new chance, and we want to make sure that both the Palestinians in Gaza and Israeli communities living across the border have a chance to put behind them this fear of violence that has driven their lives for so many years,” Mladenov said.
with DPA
