Providing Decent Transitional Shelter for Internally Displaced People in Gaza Strip During the 2023-2024 War: Needs, Options, and Solutions

The urgent circumstances arising from natural disasters, humanitarian emergency situations, or armed conflicts and giving rise to the displacement and immigration of large numbers of the population require sufficient and immediate responses to secure their lives and provide temporary and decent shelter for them. The provision of such shelters is considered a major problem for displaced persons, who are compelled by circumstances to leave their houses. This paper aims to examine the means to flexibly provide the services of temporary shelter for a sufficient period of time to the displaced persons, whose displacement was the outcome of the recent war on the Gaza Strip (2023/2024). This war resulted in the displacement of over 1.9 million citizens, accounting for approximately 90% of the total population.

In order to come up with the best solutions for suitable temporary shelter, the paper explores architectural solutions based on the examination and analysis of the factors impacting the quality of temporary shelter in terms of fulfilling the functional needs of housing, protection from weather conditions, economic cost and the factor of time pertaining to accelerating the provision of shelter units and attaining the acceptable level of performance. It reviews the experiences of the Gaza Strip in providing temporary shelter in the course of previous wars. Moreover, it draws upon the expertise of other states that managed to properly provide their citizens with temporary shelter, comparing proposed solutions through examining the factors impacting the quality of temporary shelter units and assessing the alternatives introduced to come up with the solutions that are the most commensurate with the reality of the Gaza Strip.

To achieve these goals, the paper takes the descriptive analytical approach, using multiple tools, including a questionnaire to poll relevant and competent parties, a review of similar study cases, and an analytical comparative study of various alternatives to achieve the desired outcomes and recommendations. It concludes that importing prefabricated houses from abroad shall in the beginning take priority over other alternatives and complement the second alternative in locally manufacturing prefabricated house units from metal structures, in fact responding to the functional requirements, the speed factor, and the economic cost.