Fatal building collapse highlights dangers plaguing Gaza nearly a year after ceasefire

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The deadly collapse of a multistory building in Gaza has drawn new attention to the hardships facing Palestinians there nearly a year after a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas promised to kickstart reconstruction. But as talks faltered, plans for rebuilding stalled. Many residents have since moved back into some of the hundreds of thousands of homes damaged by the war despite the risk of weakened foundations and unstable walls suddenly giving way.

The Gaza Health Ministry said 21 people were killed in the collapse in Gaza City on Wednesday. Um Mohammad Adas, whose relatives were among the dead, said the fallen building had become a shelter of last resort. “Now, they are lying in the street homeless and with absolutely nothing,” she said of her family members who survived the collapse.

“Even the clothes they are wearing were borrowed.” Families living in similar structures said they couldn’t afford any other shelter. “We don’t have money to go somewhere else,” Ahmad Arafat said on a street full of rubble near his home. “And we can’t afford to buy tents like other people.” Other people who have moved back into debris-filled buildings with sloping floors and cracked ceilings in Gaza City said they don’t have options.

“What forces people to live in these places is that there is no shelter other than this shelter. I mean, there are no tents, no basic necessities,” Alam Zakout said outside the damaged building where he and his family live. “Come on, you tell me, where am I supposed to go?

I have nothing other than this house.” The collapse this week wasn’t the first involving unsafe dwellings in Gaza, but the high death toll underscored the dangers in a territory where the vast majority of the population lacks adequate shelter. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that during the first week of September there were collapses at five shelters, a category that can include standalone homes or units in larger buildings. More than 2,000 additional buildings were at risk of collapse, the Palestinian Ministry of Public Works said in a statement Wednesday.

Dangers in Gaza persist without reconstruction Israel has said it will not permit any rebuilding in Gaza until Hamas disarms, leaving more than 1 million people to live in unsafe displacement sites, according to a joint damage assessment released in April by…