Timothy J. Dixon
Emeritus Professor at the University of Reading and Visiting Fellow/Research Associate, Kellogg College/GCHU
It was recently estimated by the UN that the cost of reconstructing Gaza would be at least $70bn. More than 80% of all structures in the Gaza Strip have been damaged (October 2025), including homes, schools, clinics, and essential utility networks, with Gaza City the hardest hit. The UN estimates that there are 60 million tons of rubble to be removed (the equivalent of 13 Great Pyramids), as well as other debris, including asbestos, unexploded war munitions and human remains.
Much of Gaza’s urban infrastructure has been destroyed
source: https://pixabay.com/photos/palestine-gaza-hijab-childhood-war-9024754/
This is clearly a huge task and so far, there has not been agreement on how the reconstruction should proceed. Many visions for Gaza’s ‘day after’ future have been promoted. For example, in 2024 the Israeli government published the Gaza 2035 plan. Based on a free trade zone, this showed AI-generated futuristic skyscrapers, solar farms, and water desalination plants in the Sinai Peninsula, with a new high speed rail corridor along Salah al-Din Road (Gaza’s main highway that connects Gaza City and Rafah), as well as offshore oil rigs.
The recent US Trump administration-led projects ‘Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation’ (GREAT) Trust plan (August 2025) and the ‘Gaza Riviera project’ (also known as ‘Project Sunrise’) (January 2026) follow a similar pattern to the Israeli plan. Both US projects reveal very similar ‘futuristic’ and ‘real estate’ focused visions. Using AI images, the GREAT 2025 US plan imagines a series of ‘modern and AI-powered smart planned cities’.
Following this, Jared Kushner, the US President’s son-in-law presented Gaza as a ‘Riviera’ development at the World Economic Forum at Davos, complete with luxury beachfront resorts, tower blocks, residential zones, high-speed rail, smart grids, and modern transportation hubs. As part of this plan, Kushner suggested that it was ‘doable’ to complete the construction of a ‘New’ Rafah city in ‘two to three years’.
In contrast to the US-Israeli visions, the locally-led Gaza ‘Phoenix’ Plan, which was published in February 2025, has a much stronger focus on maintaining local culture and social fabric, and works more closely with the Gazan people. The plan was developed by a consortium of professionals and academics from Gaza, the West Bank, and the Palestinian diaspora, together with international experts. From the Arab world, other plans, such as the UAE Al Habtoor plan (2025) and Palestine Emerging plan (2024), take a technocratic view of reconstruction, and are strongly backed by corporate interests.
It is interesting to compare the plans in terms of their timeline. Both the US-Israeli plans and the Arab-led plans described are very optimistic in terms of the time envisaged for reconstruction of Gaza, with the UAE Al Habtoor and Phoenix plans also suggesting 5 year time frames are feasible. However, we know from previous rebuilding of cities after conflict that this can take many decades.
We also know that a substantial part of Gaza’s infrastructure has been destroyed or damaged. This includes transport systems, energy infrastructure, and health services facilities. Recent data from the UN, for example, suggests that 77% of roads have been damaged and that there are now only 18 partially operational hospitals (compared with 36 fully functional before the conflict). This equates to 94% of all original hospitals damaged or destroyed, which impacts on the health and wellbeing of Gazans. Rebuilding Gaza’s shattered health system is estimated to cost at least $7bn, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) which covers the reconstruction of hospitals, and provision of medical equipment and essential services.
The aftermath of the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion in October 2023
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aftermath_of_Al-Ahli_Arab_Hospital_explosion_(3).png
As of December 2025, more than 71,000 people in Gaza have been killed and more than 171,000 people have been injured, of whom 25% have suffered life-changing injuries. Much of the population of 2.1 million people has been repeatedly displaced, with the majority now confined to less than half of the Gaza Strip. The risk of disease outbreaks is still high because of inadequate housing, continued food insecurity, poor water and sanitation conditions, overcrowding, and limited access to health services.
A child walking in front of a collapsed mosque and a water tower in Khuza’a, Gaza
So, it is difficult to see how the visions for long-term reconstruction can go ahead before the badly degraded and damaged health services and other urban infrastructure are rebuilt and reinstated. What do the published plans and visions tell us about these important issues, especially health services?
The US GREAT plan envisages a 10-year programme of rebuilding 36 hospitals with 5 new hospitals (13000 new hospital beds by year 10), and a shorter term ‘voluntary’ rehousing scheme. However, the plan is very much a ‘top down’ US-led approach. There seems to be very little say in the matter for local communities, and with displacement of local people, to either outside Gaza, or into ‘restricted zones’, this poses a further threat to people’s physical and mental health and livelihoods.
The US Gaza Riviera plan is even more optimistic in terms of timescale: Jared Kushner is reported as saying in January at Davos that the ‘next 100 days’ would be focused on sending humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, and this would include rehabilitation of infrastructure (water, electricity, sewage), rehabilitation of hospitals and bakeries, and the entry of necessary equipment to remove the rubble and open roads. The plan also envisages the rebuilding of 75 hospitals in new Rafah city within what seems to be a very short, 2–3 year timescale.
In contrast, the Arab-led Phoenix plan adopts a more inclusive, locally based approach to health services and rehousing displaced people during reconstruction. The plan focuses on a circular economy approach to rebuilding, and encourages local production, and the recycling of war rubble. Provision is also made for temporary housing during the first ‘emergency’ and ‘stabilisation phases’. Optimistically, rebuilding health services and related infrastructure is expected to take 5 years or more in the plan.
However, with little or no consensus on how to rebuild, how long it will take, or even how to fund reconstruction, it is difficult to see what the outcomes for the Gazan people will be. Meanwhile they face what can only be described as a growing humanitarian crisis, as health services and other urban infrastructure requires urgent repair and renewal.
For a further discussion of the competing visions for the rebuilding of Gaza see Tim Dixon’s recent article for The Conversation. See also BBC News Verify.