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Gaza's key border crossing with Egypt opened briefly today for the first time in a year. Only a handful of Palestinians were allowed to leave. Reopening the Rafah crossing is an important but small step in a massive undertaking to rebuild Gaza. The Trump administration has big plans for the future, but as NPR's Michele Kelemen reports, a top U.N. official wants to focus on the near term.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: As head of the United Nations Office for Project Services, UNOPS, Jorge Moreira da Silva travels to many war zones. But what he saw on his most recent trip to Gaza shocked him.
JORGE MOREIRA DA SILVA: There is nothing standing in Gaza. It's basically rubble and tents.
KELEMEN: And Palestinians living in those tents are burning plastic to make fuel to keep warm.
MOREIRA DA SILVA: The smell of pollution in Gaza, it's something that is - I can't describe it.
KELEMEN: He says this will have long-term impacts on the health and environment in Gaza and requires a simple fix from Israel to allow the U.N. to bring in more fuel.
MOREIRA DA SILVA: There is nothing else to power gas except fuel because solar panels are all gone. The transmission lines were cut. The power plant has stopped. So fuel is the only way to get some hospitals functioning, the bakeries functioning, the sewage functioning, the desalinization facility functioning.
KELEMEN: The UNOPS chief says he needs to get his engineers into Gaza to see what buildings are salvageable. And he needs Israel to allow in heavy equipment to clear an unprecedented amount of rubble, where there's still human remains, unexploded ordnance and asbestos.
MOREIRA DA SILVA: Sixty-one million tons of rubble, the equivalent of 30 tons per person in Gaza.
KELEMEN: The Trump administration has unveiled flashy proposals of what Gaza could look like in the future with high-rises along the Mediterranean Sea, but Moreira da Silva says there's a disconnect in those international conversations.
MOREIRA DA SILVA: I've seen the conversations about these big buildings and the reconstruction. Of course, this is interesting for the future, and I'm not excluding that conversation at all. But I'm saying, can we do something now? - because I don't forget the people I saw and the children I saw, and they can't wait a year or six months.
KELEMEN: He's trying to get the world focused on the early recovery period, which he says will cost millions, not billions. Michele Kelemen, NPR News, Washington.
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