UN Expert Warns gaza Recovery Will Take Generations, Calls current Situation ‘Another Nakba‘
gaza Strip – A United Nations expert is urgently calling on Israel to allow the immediate delivery of tents and caravans to the Gaza Strip as displaced Palestinians returning to the north of the territory find widespread destruction. Balakrishnan Rajagopal, the UN special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, stated that returning residents are discovering “nothing but rubble” in areas previously occupied by Israeli forces.
“The psychological impacts and trauma are profound, and that’s what we are seeing right now as peopel are returning to northern Gaza,” Rajagopal told Al Jazeera on Saturday.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians have begun returning to northern Gaza following the Israeli military’s withdrawal on Friday as part of a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. The ceasefire halts a two-year conflict that has resulted in over 67,700 Palestinian deaths and a severe humanitarian crisis.
The UN estimates that 92 percent of all residential buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed since the conflict began, leaving hundreds of thousands displaced and reliant on makeshift shelters.
Rajagopal highlighted that while tents and caravans were intended for delivery during an earlier ceasefire this year, “almost none” were permitted entry due to Israel’s ongoing blockade. “Even immediate relief and aid to the people of Gaza is not possible unless Israel stops controlling all the entry points. That is essential,” he emphasized.
Rajagopal,who has described the destruction of homes in Gaza as “domicide,” asserts that the decimation of housing is a central element of what he considers Israel’s genocide against Palestinians. “the destruction of homes and clearing people from the area and making the area uninhabitable is one of the main ways in which the act of genocide has been committed,” he stated.
He predicts the recovery process “will ultimately take generations,” drawing a parallel to the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine, known as the Nakba. “What has happened in the last two years is going to be something similar,” Rajagopal concluded.
