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With the international community pondering different reconstruction plans  in the Gaza Strip, we note that all of those options provided fail to address Palestinians’ legal right to reparations. These proposed plans (Arab League and US), while couched in the language of ‘peace’ and ‘stability,’ ultimately reflect a continuation of the international community's historical failure to uphold the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, including the rights to return and self-determination, and address the root causes of Palestinian dispossession: colonization, forced displacement, and apartheid. Framing "reconstruction" as a substitute for reparation reveals a vision of Gaza’s future shaped not by the aspirations of its people and the principles of international law, but by the colonial geopolitical interests of regional and international powers. 

Reparations can take many forms, including: restitution (i.e., restoring the rights holders to their original situation before the violation occurred), compensation (i.e., financial remedy for economically accessible loss), rehabilitation (medical, psychological, legal and social), and satisfaction (cessation of violations, truth-seeking, public apologies, judicial sanctions etc.). These measures can broadly be defined as providing remedy for the harm caused to the given rights holder in an adequate, effective, prompt and proportionate manner. It is essential to note that reconstruction can, and must, be a part of the broader reparations strategy, but it should be understood within this rights-based framework as opposed to the ‘charity’ proposed by the international community in their plans.

These plans are deeply flawed as they, at best, center the two-state solution as the only horizon for a Palestinian future. In doing so, the Arab League plan reduces the question of Palestine to a humanitarian issue and a narrow territorial dispute along the 1967 borders, ignoring the foundational injustice of the 1948 Nakba and the ongoing exile of millions of Palestinian refugees. At worst, the American plan advocates for the complete ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza. Regardless of which plan one analyzes, the current international "reconstruction" approach is being imposed against the will and the rights of the Palestinian people. On the other hand, a reparations approach centers Palestinian rights, holds the perpetrator accountable, and serves as a deterrent to the re-occurrence of international atrocities and crimes.

Notable amongst all the plans proposed for reconstruction, there is not a single mention of the word “reparations”. Nowhere is there any serious attempt to grapple with justice for over seven decades of dispossession, displacement, siege, and suppression. While reconstruction must be a constituent part of reparations, reconstruction in these plans is framed not as a right owed, but as a conditional process managed by technocrats, donors, and international institutions — entities historically complicit in Palestinian subjugation. Such conditions, imposed by the perpetrator of these crimes, the Israeli regime, are multitudinous and constrictive. They limit the fundamental and democratic rights of Palestinians and blackmail them for the potential relief of charity. Furthermore, the treatment of Palestinian armed resistance as a mere "challenge" to be resolved through imposed political and security processes obfuscates the reality that resistance arises from the exclusion of Palestinian people's will jointly with the absence of justice, freedom, and decolonization, and is an enshrined right under international law. Disarming the resistance without dismantling the structures of oppression reproduces the logic of pacification, not liberation.

Crucially absent from any reconstruction plan is any demand that ‘Israel’ — as the perpetrator of international crimes and the principal agent of Gaza’s destruction — bear financial responsibility for the reconstruction of Gaza. Under international law, ‘Israel’, as a colonial-apartheid regime and the perpetrator of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza , has a clear obligation to provide reparations for the immense material and human damage it has caused. The reliance on international donors, foreign investment, and Palestinian civil society to finance Gaza’s reconstruction not only absolves the Israeli regime of its legal and moral responsibilities, but entrenches a dangerous precedent where the commission of international crimes is subsidized by its victims and the international community. While the international community does have obligations to protect the Palestinian people and their inalienable rights, the burden of reparation and reconstruction should rest primarily on the Israeli regime’s shoulders and those colonial states who continue to collaborate in the genocide. This means that the financial burden for reconstruction should be chiefly carried by the regime and those complicit in its crimes and should be seen as one of the pillars of accountability required to ensure the vindication of Palestinian rights. Beyond mere financial responsibility, the perpetrators must be held to account for their crimes and face justice in a court of law.

Reconstruction without reparation is not justice. Reconstruction without full return is not liberation. The international community’s plans reflect a global consensus to manage Palestinian suffering rather than to end it. Reparations require not merely the reconstruction of Gaza as a ghetto within a fragmented pseudo-state, but the dismantling of the structures of colonial domination, the full return of Palestinian refugees, and the realization of Palestinian collective rights, including their inalienable right to self-determination, — not merely to "remain" — but to return, to rebuild, and to reclaim all of historic Palestine.