The Israelis and Palestinians have agreed to a deal to allow for the reconstruction of Gaza following Operation Protective Edge.
The United Nations, Israel and the Palestinian Authority have reached a deal to allow reconstruction work to begin in the war-torn Gaza Strip with U.N. monitoring of the use of materials, U.N. Middle East envoy Robert Serry said on Tuesday.
Serry told the U.N. Security Council that the United Nations had brokered the deal “to enable work at the scale required in the strip, involving the private sector in Gaza and giving a lead role to the Palestinian Authority in the reconstruction effort, while providing security assurances through U.N. monitoring that these materials will not be diverted from their entirely civilian purpose.”
Reuters also reported that “[t]he Palestinian Authority said in a study recently that the reconstruction work would cost $7.8 billion.” According to recent Congressional testimony from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Jonathan Schanzer, that amount is less than the estimated combined net worth of Hamas leaders Moussa Abu Marzouk (at least $2 billion), Khaled Meshaal (at least $2.5 billion) and Ismail Haniyeh ($4 billion).
[Photo: Reuters / YouTube ]