A year after pledging $3.5 billion to help Gaza recover from last summer’s deadly conflict, sluggish donors have delivered barely a third of the aid they promised.
New World Bank figures show that the biggest offenders are often those who pledged high at an October 2014 conference: Saudi Arabia and Qatar have only handed over 10 percent of their vast pledges.
The war between Israel, Hamas and other Islamist militants killed 2,000 Palestinians – mostly civilians – and left more than 100,000 seeking shelter by the August ceasefire. According to UNRWA, the UN's Agency for Palestine refugees, more than 9,000 homes in Gaza were destroyed and another 130,000 damaged.
Reconstruction began on the first Gaza home this summer, and according to the World Bank, 1.6 tons of construction material have entered Gaza since the war – 6.7 percent of the amount that will eventually be needed to rebuild the beleaguered enclave.
Credit: Annie Slemrod
Photo by: Shareef Sarhan/UNRWA