The suitable climates in the cities of Jericho and Gaza boosted the emergence of new attempts to revive earthen architecture on organizational and individual levels. These attempts produced a number of earthen buildings in the last few years following the crucial need to find alternative low-cost material instead of natural stone, which is used in a large scale in Palestine. Similar attempts had a certain response to the social needs and economic situation there. This paper focuses on the possibility of using earth as an alternative material to refurbish the envelopes of existing housing units including two categories; firstly, refurbishing envelopes of housing units that were partially destroyed during attacks (ex. in Gaza, about 27% of the housing units were damaged in 2014). Secondly, refurbishing existing houses envelopes to follow the basic environmental considerations. Both categories respect the sustainability dimensions; the social contexts, and economic levels of occupants, besides the attention toward the technical and environmental improvements of the earth in the future.

The Palestinian architecture shows a big leap between the Past and the Present: the excessive use of natural stone in construction following the copy and paste method without paying attention to the identity, the nature, the context, or the economic levels of people. The randomness of urban fabric has emerged recently, losing the social interdependence, buildings are scattered without order, without the existence of a certain architectural style, and a dramatic lack of attention towards environmental and economic aspects. Mostly, the paterfamiliases are spending most of their lives building their own houses, due to the high construction costs, or they have to pay a lot to rent houses. This issue was not a great responsibility upon the paterfamilias previously. The gap between traditional buildings and current constructions is however usual in many other places in the world. In Palestine, there are some critical conditions, produced as a consequence of the peculiar political situation. For this, the humanitarian aspects, in addition to the social, economic, and environmental ones, distinguish the social housing situation there.