REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, RAMALLAH - Rebuilding Gaza will cost 7.8 billion USD, the Palestinian Authority said on Thursday, in the most comprehensive assessment yet of damage from a seven-week war with Israel during which whole neighborhoods and vital infrastructure were flattened.

The cost of rebuilding 17,000 Gazan homes razed by Israeli bombings would be 2.5 billion USD, the Authority said, and the energy sector needed 250 million USD after the Strip's only power plant was destroyed by two Israeli missiles.

"The attack on Gaza this time had no precedent, Gaza has been hit with a catastrophe and it needs immediate help because many things can't wait long," Mohammed Shtayyeh, a Palestinian economist and a senior member of the West Bank's dominant Fatah party, told reporters in Ramallah.

Rebuilding Gaza would depend heavily on foreign aid and would require an end to Palestinian rivalry and Israel opening its border crossings, said Shtayyeh, who heads the Palestinian Economic Council for Research and Development (PECDAR) which ran the survey.

But none of the factors mentioned by Shtayyeh appeared forthcoming. A donor conference in Cairo has yet to be formally scheduled, Palestinian institutions remain divided between Gaza and the West Bank and Israel has yet to fundamentally ease the movement of people and goods at its Gaza border.

The PA's assessment also found that the Strip's education sector would need around 143 million USD to get back on its feet. About half a million children have been unable to return to their schools due to damage or because the buildings are being used to house refugees.

Over 106,000 of Gaza's 1.8 million residents have been displaced to UN shelters and host families, the UN says.

The remaining billions of dollars in the PECDAR assessment, which was compiled by 13 experts resident in Gaza and their research teams, were allocated to the financial, health, agriculture, and transportation sectors, all of which suffered widespread damage during the war. The assessment also earmarked 670 million USD for an airport and sea port, which Shtayyeh said was a Palestinian right, but Israel has so far rejected.

Fighting between Israel and the Islamist militant group Hamas in Gaza killed over 2,100 Palestinians, most of them civilians, along with 64 Israeli soldiers and five civilians.

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