KHAN YUNIS: Tourist-filled cafes along a palm-lined waterfront are a far cry from the impoverished reality of the Gaza Strip, but with an Israeli withdrawal on the horizon, some are beginning to dream of such a future. It has been years since Palestinians in the war-torn slums of Gaza have dared to dream of a better tomorrow. But for Khan Yunis mayor Osama al-Farrah, Israel’s plans to evacuate the territory by August have changed everything. “We want to develop the area towards the beach because these areas will present a lot of opportunities,” says the mayor, who has been working on a plan for the land Israel has occupied for just under 40 years.

Planning so far, however, has been difficult without any coordination with the Israelis, he said.

“There are many obstacles in front of us,” said Farrah, sitting in his spacious office in the glass-fronted town hall.

“We have to make a masterplan for the land use and in order to do that, we need satellite photos and surveys of the area. Without that, we cannot do anything,” he says.

Given the chronic overpopulation in Gaza, the most pressing need is for housing.

The 21 Jewish settlements and the surrounding military infrastructure monopolize just over one third of Gaza’s total 365 square kilometres (140 square miles).

The remaining two-thirds of the land house around 1.4 million Palestinians in a population density of over 3,000 people per square kilometre.

But keeping the existing Israeli homes is not on Farrah’s agenda.

The houses, built for smaller Jewish families on large plots of land, would only waste much-needed space vital to meet urgent Palestinian needs, he says.

“The Israeli government has to demolish the houses and completely remove the rubble. If they don’t do that, they will have to pay for the demolition,” Farrah insists.

Demolishing the houses would leave around one million cubic metres of building waste, which would cost an estimated 18 million dollars to remove, not to mention the environmental challenges involved in such a task.

Minutes away from the municipality lie the shattered remains of Khan Yunis refugee camp — one square kilometre that is home to some 62,000 people.

The camp lies less than two kilometres from the sea and borders on the Jewish settlement of Neve Dekalim.

Running over weed-covered rubble, hordes of barefoot children play amongst countless ruined structures.

Between them and the twinkling blue sea, the orderly red roofs of the settlement and an army checkpoint keep the beach eternally out of reach.

“We have to try and change the dreadful living conditions here,” says Lionel Brisson, director of operations at the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), which is looking at developing Gaza’s eight refugee camps.

Until now, UNRWA has been unable to carry out any reconstruction work in areas bordering on Israeli settlements because of the need to coordinate even the most banal tasks with Israel.

Palestinian officials are in negotiations with UNRWA over urgent infrastructure needs, such as connecting the Israeli water and sewage systems with Gaza’s existing networks. Not everyone is sure the Israelis will leave everything intact.

Ali Abu Maraseh from the Palestinian Economic Council for Development and Reconstruction remembers what happened after Israel pulled out of Gaza’s main towns after the Oslo Accords. “We found floodwater and sewage, destroyed roads and buildings. Since then, we have spent 10 years trying our best to rehabilitate the situation,” he says.—AFP