Rebuilding Gaza was seen as a ‘Herculean’ task before Oct. 7; six months of bombing has led to crises that will long outlive the war

Tue, 7 May 2024 20:13:44 +1000

Andrew Pam <xanni [at] glasswings.com.au>

Andrew Pam
<https://theconversation.com/rebuilding-gaza-was-seen-as-a-herculean-task-before-oct-7-six-months-of-bombing-has-led-to-crises-that-will-long-outlive-the-war-223076>

"Over a decade ago, a United Nations report described the Gaza Strip as
virtually unlivable, adding that it would require “Herculean efforts” to change
that.

Today, after six months of bombardment, mass displacement and siege by Israel,
the task of rebuilding Gaza seems practically unimaginable.

I’m a scholar and a systems engineer who, as research director of the Center
for Health and Humanitarian Systems at Georgia Tech, looks at the intersection
of public health and education, with a focus on optimizing systems for
effective and equitable access to essential services.

I know that in the best of times, designing complex systems that involve
people, communities, technologies and limited resources – often with
conflicting priorities and impacting multiple segments of society – is an
extremely complex challenge. Doing so in the midst of a geopolitical conflict
makes the problem seem infeasible.

But what we are dealing with now in Gaza is on a different scale altogether.
The enclave is facing cascading crises – a condition in which multiple
interrelated crises occur sequentially or simultaneously, each triggering or
exacerbating the next. And as hard as it is to look beyond the daily horrors of
warfare in Gaza, there will be a time when the world starts to turn to recovery
and reconstruction. The concern is that the cascading crises will make this
process that much harder and moreover amplify the human costs of this conflict
for years to come."

Cheers,
       *** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net               Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/                 Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/            Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/               Manager, Serious Cybernetics

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