Who will rebuild Gaza?

When the last shot is fired in the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the fog of war eventually lifts, the challenge of who will rebuild Gaza will need to be addressed.

While such a thought may be difficult for some Israelis to stomach, especially those who lost loved ones in the October 7th Hamas atrocity, the ‘what happens next?’ question demands both an answer and a plan.

In his masterful work World Order, the late US statesman and diplomat Henry Kissinger noted that when President Harry S Truman was asked in 1961 what part of his presidency made him most proud, he said: ‘That we totally defeated our enemies and then brought them back into the community of nations.’ Those enemies, of course, included Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan, both of which committed an unimaginable number of atrocities and acts of genocide.

President Benjamin Netanyahu’s government also plans to totally defeat Hamas but, crucially, it has yet to decide what will become of Gaza and its population.