The will to rebuild in the face of the horror of the disaster.. Will Gaza create a model similar to Germany and Japan? | news

Tons of rubble compete in the expanse with tens of thousands of martyrs. In every inch there is a telling story. From here the bullets passed and the flames roared, and from here the Israeli aggression wrote, with its death knuckles and life-snatchers, a story of pieces and rubble, the chapters of which continued between October 3 in two years of blood and fire.

Just as the Gazan rush was witnessed in the face of aggression, it is also expected that it will be witnessed in the will to rebuild, especially since Gaza has a long history of demolition and construction, since the invaders took it, since the parting of water and mud, and since the beginning of the struggle in Akhat al-Qamarain and Qarinat al-Dunya.

The scale of destruction and the strength of resolve

However, the Gazan determination will face, on the way to construction, millions of tons of rubble and rubble, not all of which can be made into stairs to ascend. Rather, you will find underneath them disasters that the media has not revealed before, and the rubble may have crouched on many bodies, who were walking in the streets, filling the horizon with cheerful humanity.

Will the Gazan phoenix emerge from the ashes of the flames to soar across the horizons again, returning to the beach neighbor its splendor, its ancient towers, the joy of its fishermen, and the songs of the birds in its gardens that were burned by the Israeli aggression that lasted for two full years?

If Gaza is able to emerge from under the bullets, it must prepare construction spaces, which requires at least dealing with the remnants of the strongest and cruelest aggression in its history of wars.

The number of demolished facilities in Gaza amounts to more than 300,000 completely destroyed homes, and nearly 200,000 other homes were severely damaged, which is approximately 90% of the city’s resilient housing stock. As for the roads and streets, most of them were blown up, requiring their complete rebuilding again.

Wounded Gaza will find itself obligated to rebuild approximately 37 hospitals that were exhausted by the occupation, between completely destroyed and largely damaged. As for health care centers, approximately 105 centers were catastrophically damaged.

Do not ask about educational facilities, as approximately 95% of them have been lost and are completely out of service, completely destroyed and severely damaged.

With regard to mosques, more than 800 of them were demolished, either completely destroyed or damaged to a large extent during the flames of the past two years. As for water and sanitation resources, about 85% of them were destroyed, and between these multiple destroyers and the sky-high rubble, hunger appears to be another story, no less difficult than the battle for reconstruction.

What model for reconstruction?

Reconstructing Gaza is not impossible despite the huge numbers expected for the costs of returning to life, which are expected to exceed 53 billion dollars, especially with the determination and determination of the Gazans and their unimaginable ability to build and achieve, and their habit of facing the harshest conditions and coexisting with the harshest and most difficult conditions.

Given the human potential, the nature of society, and its previous experiences with the siege and the reconstruction of what was destroyed, it can be said that Gaza’s recovery from the calamity of aggression is very possible, and is preceded by multiple international models, in which countries and cities rebuilt after they had been destroyed by bombs. The following are the most famous of these models:

Germany… rising from the rubble of war

Germany can be considered a model of recovery from the calamity of two global wars within a quarter of a century. If the First World War destroyed many German cities, the process of construction and reconstruction did not last long, until the Second World War came at the beginning of the fourth decade of the last century, writing 7 years of flame and rubble.

During the war years, the Nazis were preparing for what would come after the “delusional” victory, as they were forcing the prisoners to open roads and remove rubble and rubble, but the hand of fate placed the reconstruction pen in the hands of a non-Nazi party, so that Germany began immediately after the war on a rapid path of construction and reconstruction.

The most prominent reasons for the German renaissance in construction were based on:

• The overwhelming national feeling of the necessity of rising and getting out of the pit of defeat.
• The principle of restoration, which views the ancient German architecture as a sacred heritage that must be re-established again, is what makes the memory of the place alive and strong in all German cities, where the houses store the memory of its founding and restoration, and many of the events that happened to it, history carved into the body of the solid stone.

Although Germany was bound by restrictive conditions, intended to be a pastoral nation, far from industrial production, the new transformation with the emergence of the German mark currency on the ruins of the Third Reich led to the development of the market economy, the movement of collective trade, and the revitalization of the automobile industry. After a few years, Germany found itself an attractive, effective, and influential economic force, due to the policy of a collective market economy, and directing competitiveness to production.

The combination of the internal factor, through the structural re-establishment of the economy, and the external factor, through the American Marshall Development Plan, played a decisive role in the renaissance of Germany, and returning it to its path of development, which later culminated in unification with East Germany, and the shovels moved again, not to demolish the facilities, but to bring down the wall of separation between the Germans.

Japan…rising on the ashes of Hiroshima

The destruction of the cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and striking the country with nuclear weapons, was not the end of the Japanese nation. Rather, after a few years, it was the beginning of an automated renaissance for this country, which some call “Planet Japan” because of its human rush towards work and production.

That massive massacre reshaped awareness and development in Japan, which Western people took over with a new hand, other than the one with which they destroyed it. The Americans restructured the political and economic system, and rebuilt the education system, and the response was quickly achieved, as the Japanese economy grew, and its boom began to rise and develop with the sixties, and that renaissance was founded on factors, the most prominent of which are:

• American effectiveness in support and guidance, building new institutions, and laying the foundations for reform in local administration and development.
• Directing huge capital to education, technology and industrial production.
• Ability to achieve, as Japan has an intense passion for work.
• Societal competition for the development industry.
• Competitive industries in various fields, and early orientation to international markets.

South Korea…a miracle on the Han River

South Korea emerged from the Japanese occupation, only to find itself facing a civil war with its northern side. For 3 bloody years, Seoul began to heal its wounds. The agricultural output was one of the most important bandages of the post-war years. In parallel, Western aid flowed to this liberal country in an anti-Western communist space.

With aid, diversification and economic development, the country’s gross product has multiplied dozens of times since then, and Korea has become one of the most important countries in the world, especially in the knowledge economy, after Western-backed democracy ensured political stability that enabled the Koreans to devote themselves to production, after their state became an important arm in the face of an angry and anti-Western brother.

Rwanda…a renaissance over the pile of skulls

The Rwandan model was not only successful in overcoming its stifling crisis in its economic dimension (the size of the Rwandan economy tripled in 15 years), but it was even more impressive in achieving outstanding achievements in a developmentally failing African space. The size of the Rwandan economy tripled in 15 years, with growth reaching 8% annually.

After a few years of civil war that claimed more than a million deaths, Rwanda’s new day began to emerge from its burning night, and the country began to adopt its new model, with its strong general, Paul Kagame, and poverty began to decline continuously.

At the beginning of its renaissance, the Rwandan development mind focused on education, health, and agriculture, after paving the soil of reconciliation for the seed of beneficial development, getting rid of the French language, which was the cultural framework of the Rwandans, and switching to English.

The Rwandan experience has enabled multiple factors to reach a developmental take-off through:

• Strong, effective political leadership with a Western-backed vision, through Vision 2020, which Kagame adopted and enabled him to achieve his goals.
• Restorative judiciary that enabled victims to obtain their rights, and also enabled them to forgive, and through the duality of justice, forgiveness and national reconciliation, Rwanda began to offer the world a model of coexistence far from the spirit of revenge.
• Supporting the small community economy and stimulating the competitiveness of small enterprises, which turned Rwanda into a model in development, economics and hygiene as well.

Gaza…a repeated experience with destruction and reconstruction

As for Gaza, it welcomes its second week after the cessation of the war by bidding farewell to more martyrs, and with the laughter of its children who were born during the painful aggression, and between death and life. Gaza has drawn more than once its recurring model of reconstruction, or rather of adapting to the death that lurks in it at all times.

Perhaps Gaza’s success over the past 20 years in developing its development capabilities – as demonstrated by the size of the destroyed schools (400) and health facilities (38), in addition to the huge amount of homes, in addition to the aesthetic urban style that characterized large parts of Gaza during the past years – confirms that its reconstruction is not excluded, even if it requires:

• Military and security stability, and the Gaza Strip enjoyed a sufficient period of calm, away from the wars that Israel launches from time to time, with the siege being lifted or eased in a way that allows the entry of building materials and the most important reconstruction requirements.
• The international support needed for reconstruction again, which ranges between 53-80 billion dollars.

Based on these two factors, the Gazans have a great ability to achieve, based on:

• The cooperative spirit and community synergy that manages the sector through networks of active popular and charitable associations in the city.
• A deep fighting spirit among Gaza’s youth could work miracles for the upcoming transformation of their devastated sector.
• International and Arab support, especially from the mediating countries and sponsors of the agreement to end the war.

Between Gaza, in its effort to clear the rubble of war, and previous international models, the gap remains wide. The West was the main axis in making the transformations after the destruction it caused, and the element of choosing and directing the political system and restructuring the state was the password in those major transformations that created the Japanese, German, Korean, and Rwandan model.

In the case of Gaza, the West – especially the United States of America – is a strong ally of those who caused the destruction of Gaza.