A crucial question is being whispered across Europe: is Gaza salvageable?
The reason this question is growing is that the humanitarian situation has not improved despite the official ceasefire. The war continues, albeit in different forms and at a different pace. Israel continues its deadly operations in Gaza, expanding the Yellow Line as it sees fit, preventing the entry of aid, and obstructing reconstruction.
On Tuesday, British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper expressed her deep dismay that the 1,100 tents sent by London to Gaza last winter only arrived in the Strip a few days ago, meaning they had been stuck at the crossings for over a year awaiting Israeli approval.
The question on the lips of Cooper and other European officials is simple and damning: if it takes more than a year to bring in a tent, how long will it take to bring in heavy equipment and building materials to remove rubble and prepare the ground for Gaza’s reconstruction?
This is why the mood in Europe is edging towards alarm. The Europeans know that reconstruction will demand an orchestra of materials, engineers, equipment, and open crossings that remain reliably open. If a year is the timeline for tents, then years upon years may be the timeline for rebuilding roads, clearing rubble, and raising homes from dust.
In that troubling arithmetic lies the real danger: a temporary ceasefire without the capacity to rebuild is merely an intermission in human suffering.
Cooper said the delay in getting aid into the Strip could not be allowed to continue and that all crossings into the territory should be opened to allow unhindered humanitarian access.
“The situation in Gaza remains dire, with worsening weather conditions compounding the critical issues caused by damaged infrastructure and over two years of conflict. Parents have been trying to shelter their children under broken roofs and open skies,” she said.
Europe is urging speed not out of impatience, but out of a clear-eyed understanding that every week lost now compounds the hardship later, and that Gaza’s future cannot be stitched together if even its most basic lifelines remain stalled at the border.
It is a race against time to avert the collapse of Gazan society after two years of devastating and genocidal war.
A recent report from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) warned that Gaza’s economy has not only faltered but has plunged into an unprecedented, man-made collapse. War and suffocating restrictions have eviscerated every pillar of survival, reducing an entire society to what the UN calls a “famine economy.”
With poverty nearing universality, unemployment soaring above 80 per cent, and per capita GDP sinking to just $161, Gaza is no longer experiencing hardship so much as an economic void.
In other words, Gaza has not just descended into poverty; it has dropped into economic non-functioning. What remains is a space where production has stopped, trade routes are broken, labour markets have vanished, investment is impossible, and the institutional machinery of economic life has been destroyed.
This is not a temporary contraction poised to rebound once violence stops. It is a structural wipeout.
Ninety per cent of Gaza’s infrastructure lies in ruins; bank branches have been destroyed; industrial, commercial, and social systems have ceased to function. The report’s estimate of an 87 per cent contraction is not a cycle but an exit from the economic world altogether.
This 87 per cent economic collapse points to a territory that is no longer simply damaged but at risk of slipping out of the category of a functioning political and social entity.
When an entire economy contracts so dramatically in a single year, governance becomes less a matter of policy failure and more a matter of structural impossibility. A society that cannot feed, shelter, or medically support its people begins to unravel at the deepest levels: formal authority weakens; non-state actors gain disproportionate influence; and external powers perceive an opening to impose their own administrative arrangements.
In such a vacuum, Gaza is treated less as a future Palestinian polity and more as a broken administrative space waiting to be managed, carved up, or overseen by others.
Thus, the collapse carries consequences far beyond economics. It carries political and legal ramifications. It calls into question Gaza’s viability as a livable space, opening the door to political designs that treat the Strip not as a society to be restored but as a territory to be managed, emptied, or radically restructured.
When an economy dies, people’s future becomes negotiable, and the world begins to float dangerous ideas: population transfers, humanitarian zones under foreign control, long-term trusteeship, or the quiet normalisation of displacement.
Moreover, as the foundations of collective life erode, the question of sovereignty itself becomes destabilised. Instead of debating who governs Gaza, the conversation drifts into whether Gaza can be governed at all under present conditions. That shift is politically perilous because it reframes Palestinian self-determination from an inherent right into a negotiable variable.
The threat of long-term external control through internationally imposed “interim arrangements,” or the normalisation of indefinite occupation under humanitarian pretexts, grows more plausible when a territory seems unable to sustain its population or rebuild its own institutions.
The implications cascade outward: proposals for population relocation, so-called safe zones, or permanent dependency frameworks suddenly enter the global discourse with a dangerous air of legitimacy. This is how irreversible damage becomes normalised, and how the world quietly transitions from demanding restoration to entertaining alternative political futures that disregard Palestinian agency altogether.
Rebuilding, if permitted at all, would cost more than $70 billion and require decades. Until then, nearly two million Palestinians will exist in the precarious orbit of an aid-based economy, entirely dependent on the political whims of those who control access to resources.
UNCTAD’s proposal for a universal emergency income is likewise a profound signal that normal economic mechanisms are dead. Cash transfers to every individual represent an acknowledgement that employment has collapsed, the private sector cannot resurface under siege conditions, and households have no viable path to self-sufficiency.
This is not development economics; it is survival economics, a holding pattern designed to prevent total social implosion while the world debates whether Gaza will be allowed to rebuild the systems necessary for independent life.
Underneath these economic and political warnings lies something deeper: an existential crisis. The UN’s suggestion that Gaza may no longer be able to rebuild itself as a “viable space and society” marks a moment of extraordinary alarm. Territorial exhaustion emerges when infrastructure becomes irrecoverable, population density outstrips coping capacity, environmental and health systems collapse, and basic life-supporting mechanisms no longer function.
This is not rhetorical exaggeration. It signals a threat to the continuity of the Palestinian community in Gaza, a point at which the territory’s ability to support a future generation becomes uncertain.
A society trapped in long-term dependency undergoes profound transformations. When meaningful work, mobility, and civic engagement vanish, identity itself begins to erode. Entire generations grow up in survival mode, with few horizons beyond immediate need. That breeds large-scale psychological trauma, social fragmentation, and an absence of future-oriented planning.
In such environments, individuals become more vulnerable to coercion, manipulation, and forced demographic engineering. Migration pressures rise, whether through forced displacement, restricted movement, or desperation-fuelled exodus. This instability is not accidental; it arises from policies designed to create conditions that undermine a society’s capacity to regenerate itself.
The language of the UNCTAD report, combined with the scale of the material destruction and economic paralysis, positions Gaza perilously close to this threshold. The Strip risks being reimagined not as a home for its people but as a humanitarian containment zone governed through management rather than rights.
The core truth is that Gaza’s crisis has crossed the line between humanitarian emergency and existential collapse. This is no longer about poverty, resource shortages, or cyclical destruction. It is about whether Gaza can remain a coherent Palestinian society capable of sustaining itself and expressing its political agency.
The world now stands at a stark crossroads. One path requires lifting constraints, restoring freedom of movement, enabling the entry of materials on a massive scale, holding violators accountable, and supporting a reconstruction effort shaped by the people of Gaza rather than imposed upon them.
The other path allows Gaza to continue its slide towards non-viability, where outside powers manage a shattered population indefinitely, where self-determination is sidelined, and where the Palestinian presence becomes increasingly precarious.
European frustration over delayed aid may be sincere, but it is far too mild for the scale of the threat. If Europe recognises the trajectory towards forced depopulation, then half-measures are morally bankrupt.
The moment demands collective political action against Israel, including freezing trade and economic agreements, imposing sanctions, and applying meaningful pressure to ensure that Gaza’s future is not dictated by the forces seeking to erase it.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 4 December, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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