(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
How to Gaza rebuilt? The Emirates want a new Dubai. Egypt, on the other hand, is thinking of a more Mediterranean city, more like before. For Trump The most important thing is that it is located in Sinai.
In recent days, everyone has been talking: except the Palestinians, who have meanwhile embarked on reconstruction.
"Suddenly they tell you: Go. Come back home. As if it were easy. The roads must first be reopened. And reopened in a sensible way. Otherwise you will get nowhere," says Yahya Sarraj (62), wearing the construction engineers' luminous vest. On a map he sees the points that need to be worked on. Not least because the roads are under a ton of rubble per square meter. The problem is not just reopening them, he says: The problem is finding them.
In between lie over 7000 tons of unexploded ordnance. And remains of bodies. Stones that look like stones, but are bones.
Since 2019, he has had the least desirable job in the world: He is the mayor of Gaza City – which means almost half of the residents of the city. Gaza Strip, close to a million people. Gaza City has 900 inhabitants, it is a metropolis.
He speaks via WhatsApp, displaced like everyone else, in his sixteenth house, or maybe seventeenth. He has lost count and is exhausted as the rain continues to pour down and flood what has not yet been flooded by sewage. In between lie over 7000 tons of unexploded ordnance. And the remains of bodies. Stones that look like stones, but are bones. A shinbone, a jawbone, a finger. And an air thick with dust. Of asbestos and dioxin. Of January 19, about the ceasefire, he says only: “We have gone from survival to an emergency.”
Of his house, of the only home he had, he only has a pottery shard. He has nothing else left.
“In fact, the reconstruction has not only already begun. It was never finished. Partly because the previous reconstruction, the one from 2014, was still ongoing, but mainly because in war there is a before and an after, yes, but also a wonder. Where life is not normal, but it is not put on hold either. And you continue,” he says. Engineering with what is available. Salvaged materials, waste materials. Leftovers. What matters, he says, is that it works. “When the IDF ordered the entire north to move south, to Rafah, and then from Rafah to Rafah south, from Rafah south to Rafah east, to Rafah west, and back from south to north, from here and there, the UN wasn't there dismantling and putting everything back together; that was what the engineers, electricians and plumbers from Gaza did," he says. "On TV and in the press we're standing in the mud cooking rice on a fire. And the wi-fi that you get the image of the mud through, where does it come from?" he says.
A $50 billion business
Don't imagine the provincial surveyor. Gaza, Gaza City, has 900 inhabitants, it's a metropolis. And Yahya Sarraj is an engineer, educated in Bradford in England. He has a doctorate in infrastructure. And so do many of his associates. In recent months, they have drawn up a plan for reconstruction together with specialists not only from Palestine – from both Gaza and the West Bank – but from all over the world. European, American, Arab. A plan that was then discussed and unanimously approved by all 000 municipalities in the Gaza Strip.
It's called "The Gaza Phoenix." And it's a plan for Gaza, but above all for Gaza.
"Because the goal is to rebuild the city, yes. But understood as a society. To restore not only life, but the way of life in Gaza, with a reconstruction that is also social and cultural," says Yahya Sarraj. "Because ultimately, a city is not just the buildings, but what is inside it," he emphasizes.
A gigantic challenge for an area that even before October 7th had no drinking water. Just salt water, seawater. And as it is now, 47 dead and 000 missing later, more bombs have been dropped on Europe than what Europe experienced during the entire Second World War.
“I hear people say that within three years everything will be fine. But that’s not true. According to the UN, 70 percent of the buildings cannot be rebuilt. With the current restrictions, that is, border inspections on concrete and on everything that can be used militarily, the reconstruction will take 80 years. Without this, the houses would be ready in 15 years – and that doesn’t include schools, hospitals and roads. How many people will leave in the meantime?” he asks. Because that’s the risk. And regardless of Trump and his idea of moving everyone else.
The plan is based on gradual interventions, in concentric circles, and above all based on the recycling of ruins.
“That is why the plan is based on gradual interventions, which in some ways are even minimal, but immediate, in concentric circles, and above all it is based on recycling. Recycling of ruins. To let the Palestinians stay where they are.”
Of the other proposals in circulation, none have even been sent to him. These are not the plans of the city planners, but real estate developernes. Because as Trump said, the Gaza waterfront is a business. More than a political risk, the reconstruction is a business. A $50 billion business.
«The Gaza Phoenix»
“The Gaza Phoenix” redesigns Gaza, to develop from house to house, as a 15-minute city – a city where you don’t have everything more than 15 minutes away. The plan reorganizes the Gaza Strip into three belts. A belt by the sea, a central belt with high building density and an inner belt reserved for agriculture and solar energy. Plus a transverse belt, the Wadi Gaza, which in this war has separated the north from the south, and which instead becomes a hinge, not only physically but also socially: a green space. “But it’s not a plan, it’s a framework,” points out Yahya Sarraj. A sketch. Which will be supplemented little by little with more specific projects. It emphasizes the how rather than the what. On principles, methods and instruments. “Because no one is against the international role. Against contractors. But we don’t want to be just labor, because you don’t get wiped out just by being bombed.”
The danger is that of Gaza only the name remains. A bit like Beirut, what Beirut used to be.
That's why, he says, the first priority – even in the most difficult moments, even while everything was falling apart – has been the archive. The property registry. The land registry office. The business registers. Protecting the archive. Otherwise, he says, when the war was over, who owned what? Who was where? The data. What no one thought about.
The property register. The business registers. The archive.
In one of the other plans, even the map of Gaza is wrong. The borders. Part of it is actually Israel.
But what was it like doing all this in the middle of hell, I mean, hunger and exhaustion? What was the hardest thing? Counting, he tells me. Having a voice.
Because Gaza is precisely described as ruins. With Palestinians in only one role: as victims. But above all because "The Gaza Phoenix" is neither Hamas nor Fatah. The authors are engineers, economists, agronomists. Nothing else.
And not surprisingly, they are anonymous. For security reasons. Because if you say something is from Gaza, it is often automatically a Hamas plan.
Chosen by the original families
If you are the mayor of Gaza, you are not against Hamas. But in reality it is more complicated than that. The mayor is appointed by Hamas, but he is elected by the original families of Gaza. From what is now the Old City. Because in 1948, when Israel was founded, 200 refugees arrived in Gaza, which had a population of 000. Gaza is not just any old city – it is the most important Palestinian city, the center is twice the size of Ramallah.
The EU is the largest contributor to the Palestinian Authority.
But what about the bills, you say? Who pays for the municipality? Hamas, right?
"No, we." From the municipal tax, the UN and the EU. With 1,36 billion euros over the last three years, plus various additions, the EU is the largest contributor to the Palestinian Authority. Which, despite the split between Fatah and Hamas in 2007, still holds power in Gaza: The split concerns the government, not the municipalities. Which take care of the daily administration. They have a technical profile, not a political one. And they are all under the supervision of the mayor.
Of the 25 local mayors in all of Gaza, some are from Fatah. And in the West Bank, some are from Hamas. The rector of the Islamic University is from Fatah. And he was chosen by Mahmoud Abbas. Like all rectors. Not everything in Gaza is Hamas-led. Much of it is “Gaza-led.” And nothing else.
Children who are eleven years old have already experienced three wars.
“On October 7th I was abroad. And like everyone else, I didn’t understand it at first. I thought it was business as usual, the two or three days of rockets and bombings that are common here. And I activated the emergency protocols,” he says – a bit like the weather forecast, but in Gaza it’s the war warning. But then I understood, he says. Or maybe, he says, I still don’t understand. Because I had never imagined anything like this. Neither the attack nor the counterattack. “Years after years of effort: gone. Especially the waterfront, which we had rebuilt. And made into the soul of Gaza. Because here you have these children who have never seen anything else, who have never lived anything else, who have only been to Gaza, they tell you that they are eleven years old and have already experienced three wars. I wanted them to have more than walls and barbed wire around them. That out of four sides, one should be a horizon,” he says.
30-year-olds in the technology industry
A space without boundaries. A space where one could be themselves. And not just, says Sarraj, what others want them to be.
And it is precisely there, to the sea, that the 30-year-olds in the technology industry have moved during the war. Because in recent years, it is not only Qatar that has invested in Gaza, but also Google. And the software development start-ups today account for 4 percent of GDP – just a hair below the European average: despite 2G. “And they have never stopped. Because you can demolish everything: but not the cloud.”
“But now,” he says, “I look out, and I don’t know. The problem is not the ruins. The ruins are solved. The problem is the uncertainty. I look out, and I no longer know what I see.”
A plan for a post-war era
"The Gaza Phoenix" strikes. Buildings have back entrances, like in Baghdad, to cushion the impact of explosions, and verandas for shrapnel. Hospitals and schools have basements with reinforced concrete stairs. Because the basements are more important than the stairs. To protect against collapse. The streets are never straight. To cut off the view of the shooters. This is a plan for a post-war era, which, however, no one has any illusions that it will be peaceful.
Even if you're just a technician, the politics here come crashing down on you.
The streets are never straight. To block the view of the shooters.
And when the dust has settled, and the emotions have settled, who knows what Yahya Sarraj will think about all this. Whether it was right to concentrate on the waterfront and leave the rest to others. Or even the least wrong. Or the only possible thing.
Among the dead is the son Rushed. One of the most famous journalists (see photo above).
All that remains of Sarraj are ceramic shards. Behind him, as he speaks, among the ruins, against the light, an exhausted man and only vague silhouettes are visible. “But I don’t want to go my way. Sometimes, yes, I feel like it,” he says. “But then I think that if we are in the middle of all this, it is precisely because we have already left once.”
Translated by MODERN TIMES' editor.
