Aid groups are urging Israel to end its blockade of Gaza and allow unrestricted passage of critical reconstruction materials and humanitarian aid into the territory.
"This unlawful blockade is the primary impediment to reconstruction and to the economic activity that is essential to any society," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of the international advocacy group Human Rights Watch, earlier this week.
More than 80 percent of all goods currently allowed to enter Gaza are basic foods, while essential materials needed for agriculture, reconstruction, clothing, shoes, and school supplies are sorely lacking, estimates the anti-poverty organization Oxfam International.
"Restrictions on food types, clothing, and school books are keeping innocent children underfed, cold, and uneducated. Hospitals, schools, and thousands of homes need to be rebuilt," said Oxfam’s executive director Jeremy Hobbs on Sunday.
Water and power utilities are also flawed and inefficient, reaching only a fraction of the population, noted a United Nations news report this week.
As of Monday, 50,000 people still did not have access to piped water and another 100,000 were only receiving water every 7-10 days, reported Gaza’s Coastal Municipalities Water Utility. The territory’s electricity utility, GEDCO, said that 10 percent of Gaza’s 1.5 million people were not receiving electricity at all and the remainder of the population was receiving only intermittent power.
This, in a region the size of the U.S. city of Detroit.
At a donor conference Tuesday in Sharm al-Sheikh, Egypt, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged Israel to reopen border crossings, almost all of which remain closed.
One of the largest and most sophisticated crossing points between Israel and Gaza is Karni, the only such location with security screening equipment and the capacity to let in 750 trucks per day. It remains closed, along with all but one of the other crossings, an entry point that Oxfam described as "inadequate, remote, and costly."
"We cannot talk seriously about rebuilding Gaza without the opening of all crossings," said Oxfam’s Hobbs.
Israel initiated the blockade in June 2007, after elections gave Hamas political control of Gaza.
Human Rights Watch says the blockade amounts to "collective punishment of the civilian population" and called on Israel to limit only the entry of weapons and "items whose direct military potential clearly outweigh their civilian usage."
Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, also stressed the importance of the wider peace process in the rebuilding of Gaza. "[Reconstruction] is unlikely to succeed unless there is a prospect of a lasting peace."
