Wed May 27, 3:00 AM ETPrevious 3 of 328 NextPalestinian workers use mud bricks to build a house in the southern Gaza Strip refugee camp of Rafah. With no reconstruction in sight, thousands of Gazans who lost their homes during the recent war simply have to fend for themselves. (AFP/File/Said Khatib)by Djallal Malti Djallal Malti – 2 hrs 34 mins ago
GAZA CITY (AFP) – All of Amer Aliyan's hopes of rebuilding his life are placed in a carefully folded sheet in his wallet, a document that for the foreseeable future in Gaza is nothing but a worthless piece of paper.
"I'm waiting for the reconstruction, but I know it will take time," the 36-year-old says.
This is a gross understatement in the besieged and impoverished Gaza Strip where an Israeli blockade is preventing the rebuilding effort after the devastation caused by a brief but deadly war at the turn of the year.
Aliyan's house was one of several thousand destroyed during the massive 22-day onslaught unleashed by Israel on the Islamist Hamas-run Gaza in December in response to militant rocket and mortar fire from the enclave.
Since the end of the war, the unemployed dry cleaner has lived under canvas with his wife and five children in one of 93 tents set up on the outskirts of the Beit Lahiya refugee camp in northern Gaza.
The paper secreted inside his wallet is the official attestation that his home was destroyed, and it is a document that will entitle him to funds for rebuilding once the reconstruction starts.
But that is unlikely to begin any time soon, and until it does the thousands of Gazans who like Aliyan lost their homes in the war will just have to fend for themselves.
Reconstruction is a non-event not because there is a lack of demand. Some 4,100 houses was destroyed during the war, as were 48 government buildings, 31 police stations and 20 mosques, among others.
Nor is it for lack of money -- in coffers worldwide sit a whopping 4.5 billion dollars that donors pledged to the Palestinians in March, most of it towards reconstruction in Gaza.
The rebuilding is not able to get under way because of the blockade Israel imposed on Gaza in June 2007 when Hamas, a group pledged to the destruction of the Jewish state, seized the enclave in a deadly takeover.
The billions of dollars in pledges remain where they are because the international community refuses to release the money directly to Hamas, branded as a terror organisation by Israel and much of the West.
The blockade, under which only essential humanitarian goods are allowed into the territory sandwiched between Israel and Egypt, means building materials stay on the outside, as Israel says they can also be used to make rockets.
In a bid to get around these restrictions, Gazans have dug dozens of tunnels under the border with Egypt that are used to bring in supplies, including construction materials such as cement, paint and wood.
The resulting trade is brisk, but limited and dangerous. The hastily dug tunnels often collapse, burying smugglers alive. The Israeli military still targets them in occasional bombing raids.
Because of the blockade the price of building materials has skyrocketed. A bag of cement now costs 220 shekels (56 dollars, 40 euros) compared with 20 shekels previously.
But the cement is of low quality, according to Hadj Salim who operates one of the tunnels, and it cannot be used to mix construction-grade concrete.
Other vital materials such as the steel rods used to reinforce concrete in buildings are too long to fit through the tunnels, Salim says.
With construction at a standstill, the newly homeless residents of the Gaza Strip where the vast majority of the 1.5 million population depends on foreign aid have had to make do.
The fortunate have found temporary housing. Some stay with relatives in what is already one of the most densely populated places on earth. But people with nowhere else to go are living in tents.
"Those who can go with families, the others stay here. There's one 12-member family living in a store room and they're paying for that," says Khaled Abu Ali, who is in charge of administrative affairs at the tent camp.
Others have turned to innovative measures.
Jihad al-Shaer, 36, was living with his wife and five kids in his parents' Rafah home when he got the idea to build a house from clay bricks in December, before the war that killed more than 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.
"The idea came from houses I'd seen in Bangladesh and Pakistan," he says.
He finished their 80-square-metre (860-square-foot) house in February -- after the war -- and today proudly shows off the results.
"It's cool in the summer, warm in the winter and only cost me 3,000 dollars," he says.
The one-storey structure that seems to grow out of its sandy surroundings was happily blessed a few weeks ago with the birth of Shaer's first son after four daughters.
His idea caught on quickly in tiny Gaza, and in early May the territory's Hamas rulers announced they would offer the option of building houses out of clay for those who want it.
After weeks of searching, Aliyan has finally found temporary living quarters for the months -- or what some fear may become years -- until Israel lifts its blockade and reconstruction is finally able to begin in dusty Gaza.
He, his wife and their children have managed to rent a small space at the back of a bakery, next to the oven.
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