Summary
The British Mandate’s response to Gaza’s post-World War I housing destruction: a complex amalgam of poor relief, town planning and municipal development under which government land was to be ceded to the Gaza municipality, sold, and the proceeds used to fund a Gaza Building Society lending to homeowners whose houses were destroyed in the war (Governing Gaza, PDF p.161 / printed p.144).
Details
- The scheme awarded no direct grants; making the municipality the putative owner and direct provider, and raising money from wealthy Gazans rather than state coffers, was meant to avoid overservicing Gaza, though officials doubted the municipality’s capacity, worried about reimbursement for the land’s value, and doubted Gazans would repay loans and build — judgments Feldman records as proved too harsh (PDF p.161-162 / printed p.144-145).
- Approved in principle as early as 1924, its final purchase agreement draft was not approved until August 1933; the commissioner of the Southern District reported in 1932 that of an anticipated two thousand available plots only seventy-seven had been sold and only four people had begun construction, a reason given being the lack of water in the new area (PDF p.162 / printed p.145).
- Land sales began in earnest in 1934, when 322 plots were sold; a 1941 Land Settlement Department report noted the delay had “reduced the necessity for granting loans to the would-be purchasers whose houses were destroyed or damaged during the war, which was one of the main objects of the scheme” (PDF p.162 / printed p.145).
- The scheme was never designed to remake Gaza’s socioeconomic landscape or expand its owning class — a feature Feldman distinguishes from later Egyptian housing interventions; as actualised it evolved into a government-regulated commercial venture and was folded into the Mandate’s general regulatory environment (PDF p.162-163 / printed p.145-146).