According to a UN satellite assessment, by December 1, 2024, over 60,000 structures had been demolished and 20,000 had been seriously damaged in Gaza, with more than 50 million tonnes of combat debris—including roads and buildings—found around the region.
After more than 15 months of Israeli carpet bombing and genocide, a truce has left Palestinians in Gaza with an awful scene of destruction.
Images show mountains of rubble extending as far as the eye can see throughout the small coastal enclave, which is home to densely populated refugee camps scattered between cities. These are the remains of the bloodiest and longest Israeli bombing in Gaza’s bloody history.
“As you can see, it became a ghost town,” Hussein Barakat, 38, said after his house in Rafah, a city in the south, was destroyed.
“There is nothing,” he stated, sitting in a beige armchair on the debris of his three-story house, sipping coffee in a bizarre setting.
Two international courts are considering charges that Israel has carried out a campaign of scorched earth to destroy Gaza’s way of life, including the crime of genocide.
Record-breaking wreckage
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are among the international rights organizations that see the massive devastation as a component of a larger pattern of genocide and extermination against Palestinians in Gaza, a claim Israel disputes. The organizations contest Israel’s claim that military action caused the devastation.
In a study released in November, Human Rights Watch accused Israel of crimes against humanity, stating that “the destruction is so substantial that it indicates the intention to permanently displace many people.”
Ninety percent of Gaza’s population has been displaced as a result of Israeli bombing, which has destroyed much of the country’s civilian infrastructure. The area is now dominated by a monotone cement gray, which has replaced the vibrant color of pre-war life. Rebuilding might take decades, if not longer.
According to a UN assessment based on satellite data, as of December 1, 2024, the war has destroyed over 60,000 structures in Gaza and seriously damaged over 20,000 more.
Over 50 million tonnes of war-related debris, including that from roads and buildings, were estimated at the outset. It stated that field validation of the analysis was still pending.
Buildings and other structures were brought down by airstrikes during the war, and the devastation grew as more ground was invaded.
Dusty patches of ground were left behind after tank tracks tore up paved highways.
Early in October, Israel began a fresh bombardment in northern Gaza that nearly destroyed the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya.
The descendants of Palestinians who were displaced during the Nakba, which resulted in the establishment of Israel on Palestinian territory in 1948, reside in Jabaliya.
The war crimes committed by Israel
However, strikes on targets were not the main source of the devastation.
Along the Philadelphi Corridor, also known as the Saladin Corridor, which runs along Gaza’s fence with Egypt, Israel also established a buffer zone around one kilometer within Gaza from its fence with Israel, as well as within the Netzarim corridor, which divides north Gaza from the south. Large tracts of land in these regions were leveled.
The buffer zones, according to retired Israeli general Amir Avivi, are an operational necessity designed to provide the Israeli army with safe land areas.
The destruction and the number of civilian deaths in Gaza have validated claims that Israel committed war crimes.
In Jabaliya, Nizar Hussein carefully walked around a big, slanting slab of concrete, hanging a sheet over the broken remnants of his family’s house.
“At the very least, we need years to get a house,” he stated. “It is a feeling that I cannot describe.”
