Photo: Al Jazeera

By Guillermo Alvarado

One year on from the start of Israel's war on Gaza, at least 42,000 people have been killed, more than half of them women and children, and the destruction is so great that it will take at least 80 years to clean up and rebuild.

This was announced in an official statement by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, Balakrishnan Rajagopal.

Due to the extent of the devastation caused by the Zionist regime in 12 months, it will take eight decades to rebuild, especially in the northern part of the Strip, where the bombing has been particularly cruel and continues unabated.

 According to the expert, the situation is desperate, with almost 100 per cent of buildings in northern Gaza in ruins, whether they are homes, schools, hospitals or administrative buildings.

According to the latest UN Development Program report, there are more than 39 million tons of rubble, including unexploded ordnance, toxic waste and asbestos.

The problem is not just on the surface, as contamination has reached catastrophic levels in underground water reservoirs and the subsoil, and it is impossible to know if it can be treated and recovered in time, Rajagopal said.

The work is urgent, but it cannot begin until the attacks stop, the Zionist troops withdraw from the area and all pre-war restrictions on the import of building materials into the Strip are lifted.

The long time it will take to rebuild means that generations of Palestinians will continue to suffer the consequences of this brutal genocide.

The only parallel to what has happened this year is the Nazi attack on Jewish refugees in the Warsaw Ghetto, which was destroyed brick by brick along with its inhabitants, only now the scale of the damage is incalculably greater.

Indeed, the UN warned months ago of the scale of the destruction in Gaza. The scale of the ruins, they said, was enormous and unprecedented, a mission the international community had not faced since the Second World War.  It should be added, I think, that the Zionists turned out to be good students of the German Nazis.