Hundreds of thousands of Gaza residents will soon be driving on paved roads inside their towns and refugee camps after Qatari-funded construction works kicked off recently. Tens of thousands of other Gazans are also expected to be accommodated in new housing units, courtesy of Qatar’s $400 million pledge to upgrade Gaza’s infrastructure.
"This road represents a new stage of our lives in this part of the Gaza Strip. When I built this house ... in 1990, my neighbors and I would use the main Salah Eldin Road to reach the nearby village of Zawayda. Now we will be able to cut short the distance to Zawayda and other important destinations like schools and medical centers, using,” Refat Hassouna Abu Rabah, a 60-year-old resident of the Nusierat refugee camp in central Gaza Strip, told Al-Monitor.
The road currently under construction in Nuseirat is one of 23 other similar projects across the occupied Gaza Strip, marking the first phase of the rehabilitation of Gaza's infrastructure.
"This road is parallel to the main 40 km-long Salah Eldin road that connects the southern and northern parts of Gaza. Actually, such a project has been pending since 1996 and has been included in the urban schemes of the Nusierat municipality for decades now. Happily, we in the municipality could finally start such a vital project for tens of thousands of our locals here in the camp,” said Khalil Ismail, chief engineer of the Nuseirat municipality.
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