Construction Boom in Gaza Strip

GAZA -- Palestinian building contractors, who anticipated that Palestinian self-rule would bring back thousands of expatriate Palestinians, have been busy changing the skyline of the Gaza Strip.These same contractors helped to build up Israel over the years but they have been pulling out of the Israeli market to join the largest wave of construction that Gaza has experienced in decades."God willing, we will have peace, and expatriates will start coming back looking for places to live," said Nahedd Asusi, 26, who runs one of Gaza's biggest construction firms.Gazan companies and wealthy Palestinians started erecting high-rise apartment buildings across the squalid coastal strip shortly after the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel signed a broad peace accord in Washington in September.Gazan investors said Israeli bans on buildings above six floors have been eased and 20-story structures are now climbing skyward.Low-rise private construction and Israel's confiscation of nearly 35 percent of the land in Gaza has created a land shortage and sent prices soaring to as high as $1,400 a square meter ($130 a square foot) in prime sites.A few years ago, the same land fetched only about $900 per square meter.Six construction firms and several wealthy landowners are investing millions of dollars in apartment blocks in Gaza City and other parts of Gaza, which is better known for its cinder-block refugee camps.Contractors say more than 10 buildings of over 10 stories are near completion while at least 30 more have been started or are planned."Now we are taking it easy, working on one project at a time. But once peace is achieved, we have the resources to take on five or even six projects at a time," Asusi said.Prices, which run up to $60,000 for a three-bedroom flat, are beyond the reach of most of the 1 million Palestinians living in Gaza's refugee camps and teeming towns.The widespread misery and poverty in Gaza have turned the region into a fertile recruiting ground for militant Islamic groups such as Hamas. It was here that the intifada or uprising against Israeli occupation began seven years ago.But Gazan builders are buoyant, saying wealthier Palestinians from the occupied West Bank are already showing interest.Critics say Gaza's creaking infrastructure is not keeping pace with the building boom.Palestinians say the delay in the peace talks held up work on roads, water and drains.But PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the self-rule accord on Gaza and the West Bank enclave of Jericho in Cairo recently, giving Palestinians their first taste of freedom since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.Gazans say that although most of the construction underway is by private investors, public construction by the Palestinian Housing Council, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and the United States Aid program are also contributing to the building boom."We need thousands and thousands of housing units to provide adequate accommodation for Palestinians in Gaza," said Bashir Dalloul, president of the Union of Arab Contractors in Gaza."There is hope for a new Gaza, the new Hong Kong of the Middle East," Dalloul said.