The UN development agency has said that the amount of rubble in Gaza would stack 12 meters high in all of New York’s Central Park or be enough to build 13 giant pyramids in Giza in Egypt. Cost of rebuilding Gaza Jaco Cillers, special representative of the UNDP administrator for a program to help Palestinians, said on Tuesday that the latest joint estimate from the UN, the European Union and the World Bank is that $70 billion will be required to rebuild Gaza. That figure was tallied in September, and up from $53 billion estimated in February. A displaced Palestinian man sits amid the rubble of his destroyed home in Gaza City, Sunday, Oct. 12, 2025, after Israel and Hamas agreed to a pause in their war and the release of the remaining hostages. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana) “The estimated damage and rubble, throughout the whole of Gaza, is in the region of 55 million tons,” he said. “Another way to put it, apart from the example from Central Park that I mentioned, is (that it’s) also equal to 13 pyramids in Giza.” “That is the amount and size of the challenge,” Cillers told a U.N. press briefing in Geneva by video from Jerusalem. $20 billion in three years He said $20 billion would be needed in the next three years, and the rest would be needed over a longer period – possibly decades. Cillers pointed to “good indications” from potential donors such as those in the Arab world, Europe and the United States, without specifying. Rebuilding Gaza is the easiest part: Trump On Monday, US President Donald Trump, who attended the signing of the Gaza peace deal in Egypt, had suggested that rebuilding the Palestinian enclave was easier than achieving the truce. “Rebuilding is maybe going to be the easiest part. We know how to build better than anybody in the world,” Trump said. What two years of war did to Gaza The two years of war in which Gaza was pounded by Israeli missiles and tanks has damaged or destroyed between 60 per cent and 80 per cent of all buildings in the Palestinian enclave, which was once home to over 2.1 million people. The total number of buildings affected is estimated to be over 170,000, including houses, businesses, hospitals and religious places. Palestinians walk past the rubble following Israeli forces' withdrawal from the area, after Israel and Hamas agreed on the Gaza ceasefire, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, on Friday. (Photo: Reuters) Following the end of the two years of war, over 500,000 Palestinians are estimated to have returned to Gaza in the past couple of days. But they are returning to Gaza only to find their homes and neighbourhoods in ruins.
