Removing mines from the rubble of Gaza could take 14 years, UN official warns
Israel’s war in Gaza has created 37m tonnes of debris, much of it laced with unexploded bombs, which could take more than a decade to remove, a top UN mine clearance official said.
Nearly seven months into the war, there is an average 300kg of rubble per square metre of land in Gaza, Pehr Lodhammar, the former United Nations Mine Action Service chief for Iraq, told a news conference. “Based on the current [amount] of debris in Gaza, with 100 trucks we are talking about 14 years of work … to remove it,” he said. With the war continuing, it was impossible to estimate how long clearance might take at its end, he added.
Israel has been accused of “domicide” over the intensity of its bombing campaign in Gaza, which has reduced large swaths of the strip to ruins. Sixty-five per cent of the buildings destroyed to date in Gaza are residential, Lodhammar said.
Clearing and rebuilding them will be slow and dangerous work because of the threat from shells, missiles or other weapons buried in collapsed or damaged buildings. On average, about 10% of weapons fail to detonate when they are fired, Lodhammar said, and must be removed by demining teams.
His comments came as an Egyptian delegation led by the country’s top intelligence official, Abbas Kamel, flew to Israel to try to revive stalled talks on a ceasefire and hostage release deal.
Egyptian efforts to halt the war through negotiations have been paired with warnings against a planned Israeli assault Rafah, the only place in Gaza where Israel has not sent in ground troops.
The border town shelters more than half of Gaza’s population, most displaced by fighting elsewhere, and at a time of looming famine it is also the main entry point for humanitarian aid. An attack there would have “catastrophic effects” not only on Palestinian civilians, but on regional peace and security, the Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, warned this week. Cairo has previously said an Israeli offensive in Rafah would violate the decades-old peace deal with Egypt.
Israeli leaders say four Hamas battalions have taken shelter among civilians in Rafah. Troops, tanks and armoured vehicles have massed in apparent preparation for the offensive.
Airstrikes on Rafah have also escalated. One of the most recent victims was a baby girl, who died in hospital after being delivered from her dying mother’s womb.
Israeli attacks have killed 34,000 Palestinians, the majority of them women and children, in nearly seven months, according to Gaza’s health authorities. Israel launched the war in response to the 7 October attack when Hamas killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 250 people hostage.
Kamel is presenting a “new vision” for a long-term ceasefire in Gaza to Israelis, an Egyptian official told the Associated Press.
The first stage of the ceasefire would see a limited hostage release in return for freeing Palestinian prisoners held in Israel and allowing significant numbers of Palestinians to return to their homes in the north of the territory. Then talks of a larger deal to end the war would continue.
There has been growing international pressure for a deal, with both
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Hamas and Israel accusing each other of intransigence. Inside Israel, far-right members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition have been pressing him to send troops into Rafah. “The Egyptian proposal arrived because Hamas is afraid of a Rafah operation,” the security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, wrote on X. “Rafah now!”
US troops have also begun construction of a floating pier for humanitarian aid that aims to speed the flow of desperately needed food into the territory, the Pentagon said.
And if Sderot is not safe, then Israel is not safe.”
“It will never be made safe until Hamas is destroyed,” Eli added. “We need to go into Rafah and kill every last Hamasnik.”
Eli was sceptical that Israel had the international support for a ground incursion. “Biden won’t let us finish the job,” he said.
Others have suggested in media interviews that a push by the authorities to get people to return to Sderot was driving the renewed attacks on the city.
“I have a bad intuition,” Oshrat Hazot told Israel’s Channel 12 while packing in Tel Aviv last month. “I feel that when we go back there, everything will start again, because Hamas knows that they [the Israeli government] set us a return date.”
The bigger question for many is whether the IDF’s objective of destroying Hamas is an achievable one. Polling suggests a majority of Israelis think the likelihood is fairly or very low.
That sentiment was backed by an assessment by US intelligence agencies, released in March.
“Israel probably will face lingering armed resistance from Hamas for years to come,” the report stated, “and the military will struggle to neutralise Hamas’s underground infrastructure, which allows insurgents to hide, regain strength and surprise Israeli forces.”
Israeli officials recently told the New York Times that about 3,0004,000 Hamas fighters were still present in the areas of northern Gaza closest to Sderot, despite Israel’s claims to have completed major combat operations there.
Michael Milshtein, of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, believes that while much of Hamas’s military capacity has been degraded, the “catch-22” facing Israel is that without a full occupation, for which there is no political will or international support, Israel will be forced to confront the threat of Hamas in Gaza.
“There has been a reset,” Milshtein said. But what is clear is that the reset is not a return to the pre-rocket days. “We can’t erase Hamas. It has not gone away. It has suffered dramatic damage. But it will be around for dozens of years to come.”
Outside one of Sderot’s strip malls, a man emerged carrying a toddler. He explained that he had returned from staying with his wife’s family. “It’s strange being back here. We’re still at war. At night you can hear guns in the distance. They are still shooting rockets at us.”
In his wine shop, Yoav Buskila described how the outlook of those living and working in Sderot had changed since 7 October. “We lived with the rockets for 20 years,” the 61-year-old said. “And we accepted it. But now something has to change. We need a big war that finishes Hamas.”