The Gaza Strip is struggling to recover from the damage of the last two rounds of “Guardian of the Walls” in May 2021 and the damage of the last round of fighting called operation “Breaking Dawn”.
Hamas, which is the sovereign in the Gaza Strip, takes this as an important consideration in its decision-making process regarding a possible security escalation with Israel, while the Islamic Jihad operates according to other considerations in its decision-making process, among them receiving direct instructions from the Revolutionary Guards in Iran according to the their regional agenda.
The Islamic Jihad is well aware of the anger in the Gaza Strip towards it because of the latest round of fighting and is now trying to improve its image.
The Islamic Jihad has begun to distribute material aid to the residents who were affected in the last round of fighting and were left without homes, it distributes blankets, clothes and various household items to them until the international aid mechanism begin to operate. .
The aid given is with money coming from Iran and it also includes the families of those who were killed or injured as a result of Islamic Jihad rocket fire that, due to technical malfunctions, fell in the Gaza Strip and killed innocent Palestinians.
Islamic Jihad is also funding the medicine for those injured by its rockets and paying money to the owners of partially damaged houses.
The latest IDF’s military operation against the Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip has increased the distress of the Gaza Strip, which has not yet recovered from the war in May 2021.
Dozens of houses were destroyed this time and hundreds of other houses were partially damaged, in the Gaza Strip there are still hundreds of houses from the previous wars which have not yet been restored, not to mention the residential towers that were destroyed in 2021.
According to data from the Hamas Construction Ministry in the Gaza Strip, in the last round of fighting 22 houses were completely destroyed, another 77 houses were partially damaged and are not fit to live in and another 1908 houses were slightly damaged but can be used for living.
During the war in May 2021 the IDF has destroyed 7 towers in the Gaza Strip as part of the policy of deterring terrorist organizations from firing rockets at the main cities in Israel.
In fact, the IDF continued the policy that began with the military operation in 2014 in which it destroyed for the first time 10 towers that also contained residential apartments, security officials in Israel claim that the demolition of the towers during the military operation hastened the end of the war.
A lot of time has passed since the war in May 2021 and the construction of the destroyed towers seems more distant than ever, they are at the bottom of the list of priorities of the donor countries, the towers are considered “economic projects” and not residences, even though hundreds of families lived in them, according to sources in the Gaza Strip, 450 residential apartments in the towers were destroyed in the war where 3000 people lived.
Egypt and UNRWA are engaged in the reconstruction of the houses in the Gaza Strip, the pace of the reconstruction is very slow and the Hamas organization asked Egypt to speed up the pace. According to UNRWA’s estimates, the restoration of the houses destroyed in the war in May 2021 will not happen until next year.
According to the data of the Hamas Construction Ministry in the Gaza Strip, there are about 1300 houses that were destroyed in the previous wars and there is no budget to rebuild them.
It is a budget of 56 million dollars.
The donor countries promised after the war in 2014 to rehabilitate the Gaza Strip in the amount of 5 billion dollars, in reality a plan was established for the reconstruction of 3.9 billion dollars, but what actually reached the Gaza Strip is the sum of only 900 million dollars.
Most of the donor countries do not keep their promises to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, they see that the funds that they have committed go down the drain and the terrorist organizations continue to launch additional rounds of fighting against Israel from the Gaza Strip despite the great destruction.
Despite the many difficulties in restoring the Gaza Strip from the damages of the wars, the Islamic Jihad organization continues to threaten Israel with another round of fighting from the Gaza Strip if two of its operatives in Israeli prison are not released Bassam Al-Saadi and Khalil Al-Awawdeh.
Egypt and Hamas are now trying to force the Islamic Jihad to go down from the tree it climbed, its two operatives will not be released soon and Hamas now realizes that another round of fighting will only cause more damage and suffering to the residents of the Gaza Strip, this was one of the main reasons why Hamas avoided participating in the fighting against Israel in the last round.
Yoni Ben Menachem
Senior Middle East Analyst
