Gaza rebuilding moving at 'snail's pace': Senior UN official

Gaza reconstruction is moving at a "snail's pace" and at this rate, it would likely take 30 years to rebuild the extensive damage from last summer's Israel-Hamas war, a senior UN official said.
     
Roberto Valent, the incoming area chief of a UN agency involved in reconstruction, blamed the delays on the slow flow of promised foreign aid and continued Israeli curbs on the entry of building material to Gaza.
     
Speaking in the Gaza City office of the UN Development Program, he said his tour of destroyed neighborhoods this week was "very, very disheartening."
     
Israel and Egypt have severely restricted access to Gaza since the Islamic militant Hamas seized the territory in 2007.
     
After last year's 50-day war, Israel allowed the import of some cement and steel under UN supervision to ensure the materials would not be diverted by Hamas for military use.
     
Valent told The Associated Press on June 24 that the system is too slow and Israel must open Gaza's borders to allow for the speedy rebuilding or repair of 141,000 homes he said suffered minor to severe damage or were destroyed.
     
"The housing stock is being reconstructed at such a snail's pace," he said. Easing access is not enough and "the real solution is the lifting of restrictions."
     
At the current pace, "you will have to wait 30 years to rehabilitate and to reconstruct what has been damaged," said Valent, the new area chief of the UNDP's Program of Assistance to the Palestinian People.
     
Israel says the system is working, but that construction materials must be closely monitored, arguing that Hamas is again digging military tunnels for which it needs cement and steel.
     
During the 2014 war, Israeli...