Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: US Secretary of State Anthony Blincoln is visiting the Middle
Speaker 2: East this week, where he's trying to secure a ceasefire
Speaker 2: and hostage deal between Israel and Hamas.
Speaker 3: This is a decisive moment, probably the best, maybe the
Speaker 3: last opportunity to get the hostages home, to get a ceasefire,
Speaker 3: and to put everyone on a better path to enduring
Speaker 3: peace and security.
Speaker 2: As of Monday afternoon, Blincoln said that Israeli Prime Minister
Speaker 2: Benjamin Nettannah, who had accepted the current proposal Hamas, has
Speaker 2: yet to officially respond. It's been ten months of war
Speaker 2: in Gaza, and according to the Gaza Health Ministry, over
Speaker 2: forty thousand Palestinians are confirmed dead. The entire Gaza Strip
Speaker 2: has been impacted. If an immediate ceasefire and eventual peace
Speaker 2: deal are achieved, the question then becomes, how could the
Speaker 2: Gaza Strip rebuild. To get a sense of what this
Speaker 2: reconstruction could look like and what it might take, we
Speaker 2: reached out to several Bloomberg reporters who've been covering the conflict.
Speaker 2: One of them is Ferres Algol. He's a reporter from
Speaker 2: the Gaza Strip who's now reporting on the war in
Speaker 2: his hometown from Canada.
Speaker 4: I look at the bigtures of the corner stone streets
Speaker 4: of Gaza, and they can't recognize them due to the
Speaker 4: scale of destruction.
Speaker 2: Farrest told me one of his favorite places in Gaza
Speaker 2: was called East cohn Unice. It's an area that was
Speaker 2: once full of olive and citrus trees, where people knew
Speaker 2: each other so well that they referred to the neighborhoods
Speaker 2: just by the names of the families who live there.
Speaker 4: It's there where you can smell fresh air. It's there
Speaker 4: where you can escape the dark, humid the houses of Gaza.
Speaker 4: But now looking at the images of this area, I
Speaker 4: can see that the houses that are there were demolished
Speaker 4: and the farm lands were livered by bulldozers.
Speaker 2: One of the homes that was destroyed there belonged to
Speaker 2: a thirty seven year old woman named Rana Abou Nasira.
Speaker 2: Rana fled her home after October seventh and moved through
Speaker 2: the strip to avoid Israeli air strikes, but along the way,
Speaker 2: she told Ferris, she tried to keep an eye on
Speaker 2: it using Google Earth.
Speaker 4: She was hopeful that her house was still standing because
Speaker 4: she was looking at Google Earth Images without knowing that
Speaker 4: the service doesn't update the real time. But eventually, when
Speaker 4: she was able to return to her house, she found
Speaker 4: it a pile of rebel.
Speaker 2: Among Rana couldn't believe she was looking at her neighborhood,
Speaker 2: her street, her house. She described what she found as crazy,
Speaker 2: hardly imaginable. Months of dreaming about returning home one day
Speaker 2: were dashed in an instant. There was nothing left. Rana
Speaker 2: and her family hope they'll be able to rebuild their
Speaker 2: home someday, but in the meantime, they've pitched a tent
Speaker 2: in the bombed out backyard of their house. Ferris told
Speaker 2: us that among the nearly two point two million people
Speaker 2: displaced by the conflict, this is a familiar story.
Speaker 4: That's what most of the people will do today. We
Speaker 4: are talking about seventy percent of the houses of the
Speaker 4: Gaza Strip are destroyed and damage.
Speaker 2: Today on the show, the enormous task of rebuilding Gaza
Speaker 2: and what role the international community play as the rubble clears.
Speaker 2: This is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.
Speaker 2: It's been ten months since October seventh, ten months of
Speaker 2: air strikes, displacement and destruction in the Gaza Strip. There's
Speaker 2: been lots of reporting on the lack of basic supplies
Speaker 2: in the strip, no electricity, running water, shortages of food
Speaker 2: leading to famine. Parahs told me that's been the focus
Speaker 2: of a lot of international aid efforts so far. But meanwhile,
Speaker 2: people are also struggling to access other necessities.
Speaker 4: People are struggling with hygiene to stay clean. People don't
Speaker 4: have washing products, they don't have shamboo, they don't have
Speaker 4: body wash. Period of products are not available. For many women.
Speaker 4: There die bars for children.
Speaker 2: Emergency services are strained. Hospitals are damaged and overfilled. People
Speaker 2: are also lacking access to medications that they used to
Speaker 2: take on a regular basis.
Speaker 4: Pharmacists are running law on everything. I personally know about
Speaker 4: eight people who died just because they did not find
Speaker 4: the medication and treatment that they used to take before
Speaker 4: the war.
Speaker 2: This is not the first time Gaza has had to
Speaker 2: rebuild after conflict. Hamas and Israel have gone to war
Speaker 2: five times just since two thousand and seven. But there
Speaker 2: are some unique things about this moment that make rebuilding
Speaker 2: Gaza especially difficult. For one, there's the scale of the destruction.
Speaker 2: In twenty fourteen, the conflict before this that caused the
Speaker 2: most damage. Sixty thousand homes were destroyed. Right now, the
Speaker 2: war has impacted seventy percent of the houses in the
Speaker 2: Gaza Strip. About eighty thousand have been completely destroyed and
Speaker 2: three hundred and seventy thousand have been damaged. And this
Speaker 2: time the attacks have been more widespread. In that twenty
Speaker 2: fourteen conflict, the damage was focused on specific areas. This time,
Speaker 2: nearly all of the strip has been impacted. To understand
Speaker 2: what rebuilding would take, we also spoke with Fadwahdali, a
Speaker 2: Bloomberg reporter based in the West Bank. Fadwa noted that
Speaker 2: this time there's also a new element of danger to
Speaker 2: the reconstruction efforts.
Speaker 5: One of the major big issues that all experts are
Speaker 5: saying that this war is completely different is the explosive
Speaker 5: that have fallen into the strip that have not exploded
Speaker 5: and they're under the rubble. So this requires a certain
Speaker 5: experts to handle.
Speaker 2: With all these challenges come huge costs. There have been
Speaker 2: estimates that it could take over eighty billion dollars to
Speaker 2: rebuild when you factor in hidden costs like the decimated
Speaker 2: labor market, and for it to happen Fadwa says, a
Speaker 2: lot of new materials and equipment are needed because right
Speaker 2: now Gaza doesn't have what it would need to complete
Speaker 2: this work.
Speaker 5: Eighty percent of the machinery it's been destroyed.
Speaker 2: Paras Algo says. Step one will be to remove all
Speaker 2: the debris.
Speaker 4: We are talking about forty two million tons of rubble
Speaker 4: that has accumulated in Gaza since October. If you are
Speaker 4: to remove this rebel, you need a line of dump
Speaker 4: trucks starting from New York and ending in singabore.
Speaker 2: Dump trucks stretched single file from New York to Singapore.
Speaker 4: Can you imagine that? According to estimates, the removal of
Speaker 4: the rubbile only, which will be the first step in reconstruction,
Speaker 4: will take at least eighty years eight years.
Speaker 2: Pharah says, according to someone he spoke to at the
Speaker 2: Gaza Municipality, there are around one hundred and twenty dump
Speaker 2: trucks currently in the strip, So removing all that rubble
Speaker 2: will require outside help and that would only be step one.
Speaker 2: The reconstruction of Gaza is a project that will require
Speaker 2: cooperation and investment from many different countries and organizations around
Speaker 2: the world. But getting in that new machinery will also
Speaker 2: require cooperation from Israel, which currently controls virtually all access
Speaker 2: to Gaza.
Speaker 5: You have to get an approval for all the machinery
Speaker 5: to enter the strip, unique to make sure constantly the
Speaker 5: borders are open. None of this will take place without
Speaker 5: the approval of the Israeli authority.
Speaker 2: After the break, what role will the Israeli authority play
Speaker 2: in rebuilding Gaza and will other countries step in to help?
Speaker 2: The Israeli government currently controls access to Gaza, and so
Speaker 2: any machinery or materials the strip needs to rebuild that
Speaker 2: will require the approval of the Israeli government. But Israel
Speaker 2: has expressed concerns in the past about material it considers
Speaker 2: dual use entering the area.
Speaker 1: Any material that could conceivably be used for a secondary,
Speaker 1: unintented or unwanted purpose of a military build up a
Speaker 1: security threat would be deemed dual use.
Speaker 2: We spoke about this dynamic with Dan Williams, a reporter
Speaker 2: out of Bloomberg's Jerusalem bureau.
Speaker 1: It's worth mentioning here that Hamas and other fighting factions
Speaker 1: in the Gaza Strip have proven very capable when it
Speaker 1: comes to using rudimentary materials and tools, and using these
Speaker 1: to build up an effective arsenal and even a citadel. So,
Speaker 1: for example, we know from previous videos issued by Palestinian
Speaker 1: fighters that even water pipes can be extracted from the
Speaker 1: ground and converted into rockets. We know that tiles and
Speaker 1: concrete that may have been intended for I don't know,
Speaker 1: hospitals or schools can be used to line and buttress
Speaker 1: the hundreds of miles of tunnels fighting tunnels that Hamas
Speaker 1: and Islamic she Had and other groups have created underneath
Speaker 1: the Gaza strip.
Speaker 2: Far As Algol says, in the past, these sorts of
Speaker 2: restrictions have had a big impact on rebuilding efforts.
Speaker 4: Even after two and fourteen, Israel restricted and regulated the
Speaker 4: delivery and injury of construction material by following a mechanism
Speaker 4: that would track every bag of cement and will live
Speaker 4: it the beneficiaries those who will receive the cement, and
Speaker 4: would calculate how much cemith or construction material this house needed.
Speaker 2: Dan Williams says part of Israel's willingness to allow materials
Speaker 2: into Gaza will depend on who takes over there if
Speaker 2: and when an eventual peace deal is achieved.
Speaker 1: Postfal discussions for Gaza are central to the issue of
Speaker 1: reconstruction for Gaza for a simple reason, this is a
Speaker 1: mammoth task. It's a mammoth task that will fall to
Speaker 1: whoever is formerly in charge of the Gaza Strip. It's
Speaker 1: not clear what the day after would look like, given
Speaker 1: that Hamas has no attention of yielding its rule of
Speaker 1: the Gaza Strip if it can avoid it, given that
Speaker 1: Israel has been balking so far at proposals to reintroduce
Speaker 1: the parasit and authority to the Gaza Strip.
Speaker 2: The Palestinian Authority, which was set up to govern Gaza
Speaker 2: about three decades ago, has had limited power over the
Speaker 2: territory since Hamas took over seventeen years ago, but it's
Speaker 2: continued to pay for nearly half of the strip's official
Speaker 2: government and public utility spending. Dan told me that even
Speaker 2: if the Palestinian Authority were able to rest control of
Speaker 2: the strip fully back from Hamas, Israel may not trust
Speaker 2: the government to effectively oversee a rebuilding effort.
Speaker 1: Israel simply does not trust the peace to administer properly.
Speaker 1: Some elements of the Israeli government indeed want Israel to
Speaker 1: administer the Gaza Strip indefinitely, and even to rebuild Jurish
Speaker 1: settlements there, which were removed in two thousand and five
Speaker 1: when Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip, and whose return
Speaker 1: would really be censured throughout the world among world powers,
Speaker 1: given they consider the settlements illegal. It's very hard to
Speaker 1: know how anyone could reach a situation where there'd be
Speaker 1: enough stability and enough bureaucratic consensus and enough fiscal consensus
Speaker 1: around the Gaza Strip to enable even the beginning of
Speaker 1: a reconstruction process to address the sheer extent of the
Speaker 1: damage there.
Speaker 2: Fiscal consensus that lack of clarity on who will govern
Speaker 2: Gaza it poses a problem when it comes to securing
Speaker 2: international aid and resources that are critical to rebuilding. Finding
Speaker 2: the tens of billions of dollars or more needed to
Speaker 2: rebuild take longer. With inflation high and some nations already
Speaker 2: tired of sending continued aid to Ukraine for its war
Speaker 2: with Russia and Pharas says, many countries may be wary
Speaker 2: of committing funds toward Gaza as long as peace there
Speaker 2: remains unstable.
Speaker 4: Look at Katar, for example, It was the largest single
Speaker 4: donar for Gaza through seventeen years of Hamas rule. Israeli blocated,
Speaker 4: but the Qatar signals that it is not interested in
Speaker 4: getting involved inarybuilding because it had been the over a
Speaker 4: billion of dollars infrastructure projects in Gaza and all of
Speaker 4: that has read so nothing.
Speaker 2: Talks are ongoing this week, and blinkoln has been described
Speaker 2: as sounding optimistic. But for Palestinians, whose families, homes and
Speaker 2: communities have been decimated, even that eventual rebuilding can never
Speaker 2: bring back all that they've lost.
Speaker 5: These people have witnessed so many wars, not one or
Speaker 5: two or three. They need to find peace. They cannot
Speaker 5: move on with a war after war after war.
Speaker 4: If the removal over Robin will take eight years, the
Speaker 4: curing of the damage done to the lives of Lieoble
Speaker 4: will take eighty years.
Speaker 2: This is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.
Speaker 2: This episode was produced by Julia Press. It was fact
Speaker 2: checked by Adrianna Tapia and edited by Caitlin Kenney and
Speaker 2: Caroline Alexander. It was mixed by Alex Sugia. Our senior
Speaker 2: producers are Kim Gettleson and Naomi Shadan. Our senior editor
Speaker 2: is Elizabeth Ponso, Nicole biumsterbor Is Our executive producer. Sage
Speaker 2: Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 2: Please follow and review The Big Take wherever you get
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Speaker 2: We'll be back tomorrow.