Group: 20 years to rebuild Gaza

Netanyahu says extremists are ‘galloping toward’ Israel

JERUSALEM -- An international organization involved in assessing post-conflict reconstruction says it will take 20 years under current levels of restrictions to rebuild the Gaza Strip's battered and neglected housing stock after the fighting between Hamas and Israel.

Most of the new building would be to make up for the current housing deficit, rather than to address damage from fighting between Palestinian militants and Israel.

Meanwhile, appearing in a round of post-war interviews on Israeli TV channels, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was not ready to return to the negotiating table with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas unless he distances himself from Hamas militants. Hamas and Abbas' Palestinian Authority have a unity government in Gaza.

Netanyahu has regularly condemned the formal Abbas-Hamas relationship.

The prime minister also spoke on how threats from the Islamic State, al-Qaida, Hezbollah and Iran led to his decision not to put "all assets" in one battle against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Netanyahu's comments came after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, writing in The New York Times, called for a "global coalition" against Islamic extremists who are "perilously close to Israel."

In an interview Saturday on Israel's Channel 2, Netanyahu said amid a reality "where the Islamic State is galloping toward us, al-Qaida is on the Golan borders," he decided "not to invest all my assets in this one arena," the Hamas-run Gaza Strip. The defense budget needs to be increased, he added, without citing any numbers.

The housing assessment by Shelter Cluster, led by the Norwegian Refugee Council with the participation of the United Nations refugee agency and the Red Cross, underscores the complexities involved in an overall reconstruction program for the Gaza Strip, which some Palestinian officials have estimated could cost in excess of $6 billion.

It is based on the current level of goods permitted to be moved from Israel to Gaza -- a level that easily could be expanded, which would shorten the time needed to address the territory's housing needs.

Any effort to rebuild Gaza will be hindered by a blockade imposed by Egypt and Israel since the Islamic militant group Hamas seized power in 2007. Israel has severely restricted the importation of concrete and other building materials into Gaza, fearing that militants will use them to build rockets and reinforce cross-border attack tunnels.

Egypt and Norway have raised the possibility of convening a Gaza donors' conference at some point next month, but no firm arrangements have been made.

With a population of 1.8 million, Gaza is a densely populated coastal strip of urban warrens and agricultural land that still bears the scars of previous rounds of fighting.

In its report issued late Friday, Shelter Cluster said 17,000 Gaza housing units were destroyed or severely damaged during this summer's war and 5,000 units still need work after damage sustained in previous military campaigns. In addition, it says, Gaza has a housing deficit of 75,000 units.

Shelter Cluster said its 20-year assessment is based on the capacity of the main Israel-Gaza cargo crossing to handle 100 trucks of construction materials daily.

Israel and Hamas agreed Tuesday to an open-ended truce. The cease-fire brought an immediate end to the fighting but left key issues unresolved.

While Israel agreed to loosen its long-standing blockade to allow humanitarian aid and reconstruction materials into Gaza, many of the border restrictions will remain in place. Hamas, meanwhile, rejected Israel's demands that it disarm.

Mindful of Israel's concerns about Hamas, Britain, France and Germany have proposed the creation of an international mechanism to monitor goods going into Gaza.

The latest war began after three Israeli teens were killed in the West Bank by Hamas operatives in June, prompting Israel to arrest hundreds of Hamas members there. Rocket fire from Gaza on Israeli cities then escalated, and Israel launched a massive air and later ground campaign.

Over 2,100 Palestinians, mostly civilians, died in the war. Israel lost 71 people, all but six of them soldiers.

During the violence, several rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israel's north. Syrian fighters today attacked U.N. peacekeepers from the Philippines who were stationed in the part of the Golan Heights controlled by Syria.

"I am preparing for a reality in the Middle East that is very problematic," Netanyahu said. He also mentioned the threat he sees from Iran because of its nuclear program and its support of the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon.

Yoram Meital, a political scientist at Ben-Gurion University, said extremist organizations such as the Islamic State and al-Qaida have yet to form large enough armies to "significantly pose an existential threat to Israel."

Information for this article was contributed by Peter Enav of The Associated Press and by Gwen Ackerman, David Wainer and Udi Segal of Bloomberg News.

A Section on 08/31/2014

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