Shelly Culbertson, Kobi Ruthenberg, and Rob Lane
In the wake of the fragile ceasefire, thousands of Gazans have trekked home to find ruin. This highlights an unavoidable question: After all the destruction, where can Gazans live? The 20-point proposal to end to the war in Gaza brokered by the White House put it succinctly: “No one will be forced to leave Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so and free to return. We will encourage people to stay and offer them the opportunity to build a better Gaza.”
Yet sustaining 2.2 million people within Gaza’s 140 square miles while rebuilding faces many challenges. The wreckage is almost incomprehensible: at least 62 percent of housing is gone or beyond repair, and more is damaged. There are some 51 million tons of rubble laced with thousands of unexploded bombs.
A woman stands in the doorway of a damaged building in the northern Gaza Strip on October 16, 2025. Tensions rose after Israel said aid convoys would ...Read More
Within this context, housing the Gazans will require a radical new approach to post-war reconstruction. But it is possible. We developed a comprehensive plan for post-conflict housing in Gaza. It is possible to immediately shelter the displaced Palestinians while also laying the groundwork for permanent, well-planned communities.
The first thing that needs rethinking is the role and location of camps, where most Gazans will need to reside in the near term. Although camps are a suboptimal solution, the scale of the destruction in Gaza and numbers of people involved mean they are inevitable. In theory, camps are temporary, but they often become permanent, evolving into urban slums as residents construct buildings where their tents once stood.
The Middle East has many cautionary examples of “temporary” camps gone awry. Gaza had eight that were set up in 1948 and 1967 that lasted; before the recent war, they had some of the highest population densities in the world. Pathways between tents turned into roads among tightly packed multistory buildings—some so narrow that ambulances could not pass. Jabalia camp, viewed as a Hamas stronghold and site of the beginning of the second intifada, followed this pattern and has now been completely destroyed by the Israeli army.
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