Rebuilding Gaza Will Cost Tens Of Billions, But Money Is Not The Main Problem

As the scale of destruction in Gaza becomes clearer, early estimates suggest reconstruction could cost between $30bn and $50bn. Entire districts have been levelled, basic services disrupted and much of the population displaced. The instinctive response from the international community has been familiar: mobilise funding, convene donors and prepare for a large-scale rebuilding effort.

That instinct is understandable. It is also insufficient.

Gaza has rarely lacked financial commitments. After the 2014 war, donors pledged $5.4bn at the Cairo Conference on Palestine Reconstruction 2014. More broadly, cumulative international assistance to the Palestinian territories has run into tens of billions of dollars over the past two decades, according to the World Bank. Yet each reconstruction cycle has produced similar outcomes: delayed implementation, partial delivery and infrastructure that remains acutely vulnerable to renewed conflict.

The constraint has not been the availability of capital, but the conditions under which it is deployed.

Three factors have repeatedly undermined reconstruction efforts. The first is fragmentation. Funding has tended to flow through a patchwork of bilateral donors, multilateral agencies and non-governmental organisations, often with overlapping mandates and limited coordination. Disbursement has frequently lagged behind pledges, slowing the pace of rebuilding at critical moments.

The second is governance. The longstanding division between Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority has created persistent uncertainty over authority and accountability. For external partners, this has complicated procurement, oversight and long-term planning.
The third is access. Restrictions on the movement of materials and people have, at various points, constrained both the scale and speed of reconstruction. Mechanisms designed to ensure oversight have improved transparency but have also introduced additional layers of complexity.

These structural constraints explain why large financial commitments have not translated into durable outcomes.

The current situation is likely to be more demanding than previous rounds. Satellite-based assessments by the United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT) indicate that in some areas more than half of residential structures have been damaged or destroyed. Critical infrastructure, from water networks to electricity systems, has been extensively affected. Recent joint assessments by the United Nations and the World Bank suggest that, under existing delivery models, reconstruction could take a decade or longer.

Against this backdrop, attention is turning to the question of who might take a leading role. Here, too, the options are constrained.

Qatar has provided sustained financial support to Gaza, including regular transfers intended to stabilise public sector salaries and basic services. Yet its political positioning limits its acceptability to some international actors. Turkey brings construction capacity and regional reach but faces similar trust deficits in parts of the West and among some Arab governments. Egypt, which controls key access points into Gaza, has clear strategic interests but also faces significant domestic economic pressures, including high public debt and currency constraints.

Multilateral organisations offer legitimacy and experience but are not structured for rapid, large-scale delivery in politically contested environments. Their effectiveness ultimately depends on the degree of alignment among member states, something that has often been lacking.

In this context, some policymakers have begun to look at actors with a different operational profile. The United Arab Emirates has, over the past decade, built significant capacity in infrastructure development, logistics and international project financing. Through institutions such as the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development, it has supported projects across more than 90 countries, while companies including DP World manage complex supply chains across multiple regions.

This track record suggests an ability to move from financial commitment to execution relatively quickly: a capability that has often been missing in Gaza.

That does not make the UAE a neutral actor, but its regional approach has generally been characterised by a focus on stability and delivery. Any expanded role in Gaza would therefore need to be integrated within a broader, internationally backed framework to ensure both effectiveness and political balance.

More fundamentally, the focus on identifying a single “lead actor” risks obscuring the real challenge. Reconstruction at this scale is unlikely to succeed under a fragmented model, but nor is it well suited to exclusive control by any one country.

What is required instead is a more structured framework: one that combines predictable financing, political backing from key regional stakeholders and a limited number of actors capable of coordinating delivery on the ground. Without such an architecture, additional funding is likely to encounter the same bottlenecks that have constrained previous efforts.
The financial cost of rebuilding Gaza will be substantial. But the larger risk lies in repeating a model that has consistently fallen short.

Absent a shift in how reconstruction is organised and implemented, the international community risks committing tens of billions of dollars to an outcome that proves, once again, temporary.