ReliefWeb

In Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza, in a neighbourhood full of damaged and half-repaired houses with broad, sandy streets stretching between them, lives Jamila Hamad with her 10-year-old daughter Dina in a one-bedroom makeshift flat on the rooftop of a four-storey building. The furniture is sparse – a bed, an old cupboard and a plastic table. A small, white cat is lolling on the bed. One of the two windows has been fixed with cardboard; a curtain separates the room from the rest of the rooftop.

“Now it is fine, but during winter this room is freezing cold, and the roof leaks,” says Jamila. Her small flat does not include a kitchen, but there is a fireplace outside on the rooftop, next to the water tanks, clothes lines and the typical colourful Palestinian mattresses put there to spend the hot summer nights outside in the cool evening breeze.

Jamila, a widow for the past eight years, had to flee her home and seek shelter in an UNRWA school together with her daughter in the first days of the 2014 conflict, when her neighbourhood was shelled.

The 50 days of hostilities led to the largest displacement recorded in Gaza since 1967, with approximately 500,000 persons displaced at the height of the conflict; almost 300,000 of them were hosted in 90 UNRWA schools functioning as designated emergency shelters. While families remained in UNRWA collective centres for up to nine months following the ceasefire on 26 August 2014, Jamila almost immediately received rental subsidy payments from UNRWA to rent a temporary home. She chose the four-storey building next to where her old home once stood – now just an empty plot, littered with garbage. Thought originally as a temporary solution, the displacement has since become part of Jamila and Dina’s new life.

“I have been waiting for two years to start reconstructing our home. The process to receive construction materials is very complicated. UNRWA engineers have visited me, explained the process to me several times and helped me with the documentation; I also went many times to the municipality to ask what I have to do, which documents I have to submit and where, and how. It was so tiring,” explains Jamila, who is not able to read or write.

According to the Israeli organization Gisha, the complicated Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism has slowed down reconstruction progress. Other reasons for the delay are complex documentation requirements related to proving title to land and building and municipal permits, reports the UN Special Coordinator Office for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO). Furthermore, the World Bank states that only 40 per cent of the US$ 3.5 billion pledged for Gaza’s reconstruction has been disbursed by donors as of mid-2016.

Jamila tries to somehow stay positive despite the difficulties she faces. Growing up in Gaza, her life has never been easy. Yet while she manages to live in very basic conditions, she is concerned about her daughter:

“My child has a disability; when she was younger, she had to sit in a wheelchair. Now she is able to walk with crutches. I want to urgently reconstruct our home because I need her to live on the ground floor instead of on the rooftop of a four-storey building,” explains Jamila, who carries her daughter up and down the stairs when necessary.

Besides the loss of their home, one of the most difficult things about the destruction and displacement, Jamila says, is that her whole old neighbourhood was severely damaged. “The whole neighbourhood was shelled, and most homes were destroyed. Basically everyone was displaced. This means that there is no one to provide neighbourly support – because everyone needs support. In addition, social networks were disrupted because people had to move away. The conflict also destroyed community relations. Today, everyone is still scared, there are no neighbourhood activities, and people don’t really engage with each other,” she added, sad and upset.

The 2014 conflict in Gaza led to unparalleled human suffering and destruction in the Gaza Strip. While most of the rubble from damaged and destroyed homes and infrastructure has been removed, Gaza is still devastated; two years on, most people and institutions are still struggling to cope with their immense losses, reports the UN Country Team in the State of Palestine in its Gaza: Two Years After report. Besides massive damage to the enclave’s infrastructure – including hospitals, water and electricity networks, and streets – some 18,000 housing units were totally destroyed or severely damaged during the conflict; hence, over 100,000 persons were not able to return to their homes when hostilities subsided, and 65,000 of them remain displaced to this day,

Out of the approximately 134,600 refugee homes that sustained minor, major or severe damages during the 2014 hostilities, the Agency was able to complete repair payments to 46 per cent of all affected families; payments to 7 per cent are ongoing and 47 per cent of families are still waiting to receive financial support. This is mainly due to the lack of funding – UNRWA has processed the documents of approximately 56,900 families with damaged shelters and could disburse the repair payments (first and second tranche payments) to these families immediately upon receipt of funding.