#hamas is evil

Shelter

First, let's figure out the cost of a bomb shelter. Fortunately, we can get this information relatively easily, thanks to the Cold War. Admittedly, this is a nuclear bunker, but hey; if Israel takes the nuclear option, Gaza will be fine. I mean, not really, but you know, better to go overkill than underkill.

According to the Department of Defense (1962) a Belowground Corrugated Steel Culvert Shelter cost $150 in 1962. The BLS (2025) says that's worth $1589 or so as of January 2025. Technically the shelter fits three adults (or two adults and two children), but only for a few weeks, so I'm going to pretend like it has room for only one person and a lot of food and water.

OK. What's the installation cost? They say two days excavation and four days building, plus what I'm going to say is one day of transport.

The US Department of State (2023) says the average daily wage in Gaza was $15. We'll be nice and pay our workers $30, giving us a cost of $210 for the installation. So that's a total of almost exactly $1800 per person.

As an upper estimate on Gaza's population, I'll use the UNRWA, which claims 2.4 million residents (UNRWA, August 2023). Multiplying it out, we find that the cost to provide shelter to everyone in Gaza is $4.32 billion dollars.

Food

The World Food Program USA claims the average cost of a meal they provide is 50 cents (WFP USA, 2024). At three meals a day, this means the cost per day to feed 2.4 million people is $3.6 million, which works out to $2.635 billion to feed everyone in Gaza for two years.

This means our total cost for two years is $6.667 billion dollars.

Excellent!

Water

FEMA recommends having a gallon of water per person per day (FEMA; archived link used because FEMA is 'being updated to comply with President Trump's executive orders'. I have done similarly for all non-interactive government websites).

OK. What about water sources for Gaza? It is a desert, after all; you can't just expect water to magically appear.

The most likely water source would be desalinated water. One UNICEF project was $12 million in 2013, or $16.63 million in 2025 (BLS). It produced 6000 cubic meters per day. As one cubic meter is 1000 liters, that's 6 million liters a day of water. According to the WHO, 20 liters per person per day is the minimum recommended amount; this works out to 48 million liters per person per day. Meeting that demand would require only 8 plants. To store up a reasonable amount and include maintenance, I'll quadruple that number, for a total of $532.16 million in construction and maintenance costs. (No, I have no idea what it costs to maintain a desalinization plant in Gaza.)

Assuming we can save 48 million liters/day, it would take only, well, two years to save up two years' worth of water. So, our total for shelter, food and water is $7.19916 billion for two years' worth.

Lovely!

Electricity

Currently, Gaza imports natural gas. But hey, we're dreaming, and Gaza seems perfectly suited for solar power.

One source (who, if I'm recalling correctly, is now HR for Hamas) told NBC Gaza needed 500-600 megawatts a day (Abdelkader). I'm going to say 720 a day, or 30 megawatts an hour.

For my estimate of home electricity generation, I used a building I'm pretty sure was the Chabad of Ashkelon.

I tried to make the outline small, because this is a lower estimate. Regardless, I got a figure of 18.8 kilowatts/day. Since there are 1000 kilowatts in a megawatt, that's 720,000/18.8=38,297 buildings. Let's say 40,000 are needed to meet demand and 80,000 to double it.

According to the UN, if you do the math, 116,000 buildings are still standing in Gaza, so we should be good there.

Now, I am not an expert at batteries and electricity, but I'd assume there's some way to convert the energy of solar generators to the kinds of batteries you can put in storage and forget about.

So what would the installation cost of that be? NPR says $30,000 per house (Simon), which works out to $2.4 billion; surprisingly cheap! I'll add another half that to account for batteries, so $3.6 billion for electricity. Set it up in 2021 and everyone has two years' worth saved up.

So we have a total of a little over $10.7 billion for at least two years' worth of food, water, shelter, and electricity for everyone in Gaza. I'm going to round up and say $11 billion.

$11 billion is not a small amount.

But, unfortunately, neither is the amount Hamas has stolen:

$700 million stolen from aid according to Fatah, a Palestinian organization (Winer)

$100 million/year military budget (Issacharoff) in 2016. This works out to $900 billion since then.

I could add other ones of varying reliability, but I don't need to.

But the really big one? Their leaders. According to the Times of India, they were worth $11 billion.

That adds up to $12.6 billion dollars, more than enough to cover it.

And much of this would be, effectively, one-time costs! Of the $11 billion we estimated it would take, shelter's $4.32 billion is basically one-time only and the $2.4 billion solar cost is, too.

Works cited

Abdelkader, Rima. “Gaza Has Access to Less than 40% of the Energy It Needs. Locals Hope Solar Power Can Fill the Gap.” NBC News, 23 Aug. 2022, www.nbcnews.com/news/world/gaza-access-less-40-energy-needs-locals-hope-solar-power-can-fill-gap-rcna43723.

De Luce, Dan, and Lisa Cavazuti. “Most of Gaza Is Poor, but Hamas Has Cash. Where Does It Come From?” NBC News, 25 Oct. 2023, www.nbcnews.com/news/world/gaza-plagued-poverty-hamas-no-shortage-cash-come-rcna121099.

Department of Defense, Office of Civil Defense. Family Shelter Designs. Jan. 1962, pp. 19–20, dahp.wa.gov/sites/default/files/FamilyShelterDesigns.pdf.

FEMA. “Water.” Ready.gov, 2021, web.archive.org/web/20250201201522/ready.gov/water. Via Internet Archive.

Issacharoff, Avi. “Hamas Spends $100 Million a Year on Military Infrastructure.” Times of Israel, 8 Sept. 2016, www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-spends-100-million-a-year-on-military-infrastructure/.

Lipson, Nathan. “Tunnels of Cash and Cryptocurrency: Hamas’ Finances Explained.” Haaretz.com, Haaretz, 12 Dec. 2023, www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/2023-12-12/ty-article-magazine/.premium/tunnels-of-cash-and-cryptocurrency-hamas-finances-explained/0000018c-5d6f-de43-affd-fd6fcbb30000. Archive/unpaywalled link: https://archive.is/AfbPq.

National Renewable Energy Laboratory. “PVWatts Calculator.” NREL, 2019, pvwatts.nrel.gov/pvwatts.php.

Simon, Julia. “Why the U.S. Government Is Spending $7 Billion on Solar for Low-Income Homes.” NPR, 1 Aug. 2024, www.npr.org/2024/07/31/g-s1-8152/solar-for-all-epa-low-income-climate-change-solution.

TimesofIndia.com. “‘Hamas’s Top 3 Leaders Are Worth Staggering $11 Billion.’” The Times of India, Times Of India, 8 Nov. 2023, timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/israel-hamas-war-ismail-haniyeh-worth-moussa-abu-marzuk-khaled-mashal/articleshow/105055536.cms.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “CPI Inflation Calculator.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025, www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm.

UN News. “‘This Is Our Land’ – Building Gaza’s Future from the Wreckage of War.” UN News, Mar. 2025, news.un.org/en/story/2025/03/1160661.

UNRWA. “Gaza Strip.” UNRWA, Aug. 2023, www.unrwa.org/where-we-work/gaza-strip.

US Department of State. “2023 Investment Climate Statements: West Bank and Gaza.” United States Department of State, 2023, www.state.gov/reports/2023-investment-climate-statements/west-bank-and-gaza/. Archive link: web.archive.org/web/20231011090250/https://www.state.gov/reports/2023-investment-climate-statements/west-bank-and-gaza/.

Winer, Stuart. “Fatah Official Accuses Hamas of Stealing $700m from Gazans.” Times of Israel, Oct. 2014, www.timesofisrael.com/fatah-official-accuses-hamas-of-stealing-700m-from-gazans/.