This commentary was originally published by Newsweek on October 22, 2025.
In the wake of the fragile ceasefire, thousands of Gazans have trekked home to find ruin. This highlights an unavoidable question: After all the destruction, where can Gazans live? The 20-point proposal to end to the war in Gaza brokered by the White House put it succinctly: “No one will be forced to leave Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so and free to return. We will encourage people to stay and offer them the opportunity to build a better Gaza.”
Yet sustaining 2.2 million people within Gaza’s 140 square miles while rebuilding faces many challenges. The wreckage is almost incomprehensible: at least 62 percent of housing is gone or beyond repair, and more is damaged. There are some 51 million tons of rubble laced with thousands of unexploded bombs.
Within this context, housing the Gazans will require a radical new approach to post-war reconstruction. But it is possible. We developed a comprehensive plan for post-conflict housing in Gaza. It is possible to immediately shelter the displaced Palestinians while also laying the groundwork for permanent, well-planned communities.
The first thing that needs rethinking is the role and location of camps, where most Gazans will need to reside in the near term. Although camps are a suboptimal solution, the scale of the destruction in Gaza and numbers of people involved mean they are inevitable. In theory, camps are temporary, but they often become permanent, evolving into urban slums as residents construct buildings where their tents once stood.
The Middle East has many cautionary examples of “temporary” camps gone awry. Gaza had eight that were set up in 1948 and 1967 that lasted; before the recent war, they had some of the highest population densities in the world. Pathways between tents turned into roads among tightly packed multistory buildings—some so narrow that ambulances could not pass. Jabalia camp, viewed as a Hamas stronghold and site of the beginning of the second intifada, followed this pattern and has now been completely destroyed by the Israeli army.
Recognizing those realities, Gaza needs what we are calling future-oriented camps. These would be laid out like an actual neighborhood, with a proper lot and block structure. People can live there in tents, caravans, or prefab structures while buildings go up slowly around them. Over time, permanent buildings would replace tents, in an organized way that creates functional and sustainable communities.
Future-oriented camps could be located on city outskirts, with municipal utilities extending as they would to a suburb. Our analysis of satellite imagery of Gaza shows that there are multiple open areas that were once agricultural, adjacent to cities, that would be candidates for this type of camp.
And then there is the longer-term rebuilding. Redevelopment in city cores will be costly, dangerous, and prolonged. Some neighborhoods have such high levels of destruction that the only option is to completely raze them and rebuild them. These will need to be fenced off while large international construction firms take on the challenges of rubble, explosives, bodies, and collapsed subterranean tunnels before tall buildings can rise. Civilians cannot live in these areas during this process.
However, not all of Gaza’s urban areas are equally damaged. Our satellite imagery analysis reveals neighborhoods with mixed levels of destruction, where some buildings remain intact. For these locations, we propose an approach called incremental urbanism.
It would function like this: Palestinians would move back into these neighborhoods, living in the habitable buildings and groups of tents or modular structures while repairs and new construction are underway around them. Shared community hubs would offer utilities, sanitation, and services. Incremental urbanism has the advantage of returning people to their communities and enabling them to participate in stitching together what’s left.
Gaza also will need entirely new neighborhoods, which can be developed on previous agricultural land. New development offers more flexibility than rebuilding cities. It will be faster too because there is less rubble and hazardous material to remove. There are precedents of new towns going up quickly, such as Hamad City in Gaza (now destroyed) and Rawabi in the West Bank.
Our analysis tells us that this blend of rebuilding, new development, and camps built for their future purpose as suburbs can work. We mapped specific areas that could accommodate each. With this plan, we hope to inject some thoughtful realism into a discussion that has been at times derailed by political outrage, unrealistic timelines, and a deprioritization of the needs of Palestinian civilians.
Once security is established, the territory must be mapped out to accommodate living circumstances that give displaced Gazans hope. A well-planned reconstruction process will not only help Gazans rebuild their lives but also set the foundation for long-term regional stability.
– Shelly Culbertson, Kobi Ruthenberg, Robert Lane, Published courtesy of RAND.
