The Israel-Hamas war has left Gaza City in ruins, with widespread destruction of homes, infrastructure, and civilian areas. Critics accuse Israel of employing scorched earth tactics, while Israel maintains its actions were necessary to combat Hamas militants. The extent of the damage and its impact on the civilian population are at the center of international scrutiny.
Across the tiny coastal enclave, where built-up refugee camps are interspersed between cities, drone footage captured by The Associated Press shows mounds of rubble stretching as far as the eye can see — remnants of the longest and deadliest war between Israel and Hamas in their blood-ridden history. 'As you can see, it became a ghost town,' said Hussein Barakat, 38, whose home in the southern city of Rafah was flattened.
Members of the Abu Sheiban family salvage what they can of their belongings from under rubble of their destroyed home, days after the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. 'There is nothing,' he said, as he sat drinking coffee on a brown armchair perched on the rubble of his three-story home, in a surreal scene. Critics say Israel has waged a campaign of scorched earth to destroy the fabric of life in Gaza, accusations that are being considered in two global courts, including the crime of genocide. Israel denies those charges and says its military has been fighting a complex battle in dense urban areas and that it tries to avoid causing undue harm to civilians and their infrastructure.Military experts say the reality is complicated. 'For a campaign of this duration, which is a year's worth of fighting in a heavily urban environment where you have an adversary that is hiding in amongst that environment, then you would expect an extremely high level of damage,' said Matthew Savill, director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, a British think-tank.To do so, he said, would require each strike and operation to be assessed to determine whether they adhered to the laws of armed conflict and whether all were proportional, but he did not think the scorched earth description was accurate. International rights groups. including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, view the vast destruction as part of a broader pattern of extermination and genocide directed at Palestinians in Gaza, a charge Israel denies.The groups dispute Israel's stance that the destruction was a result of military activity. Human Rights Watch, in a November report accusing Israel of crimes against humanity, said 'the destruction is so substantial that it indicates the intention to permanently displace many people.' From a fierce air campaign during the first weeks of the war, to a ground invasion that sent thousands of troops in on tanks, the Israeli response to a Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, has ground down much of the civilian infrastructure of the Gaza Strip, displacing 90 per cent of its population. The brilliant color of pre-war life has faded into a monotone cement gray that dominates the territory. A UN assessment from satellite imagery showed more than 60,000 structures across Gaza had been destroyed and more than 20,000 severely damaged in the war as of December 1, 2024. The preliminary assessment of conflict-generated debris, including of buildings and roads, was over 50 million tons.Airstrikes throughout the war toppled buildings and other structures said to be housing militants.fighters in close combat in dense areas. If militants were seen firing from an apartment building near a troop maneuver, forces might take the entire building down to thwart the threat. In pictures: Celebrations erupt after ceasefire announced The military's engineering corps was tasked with using bulldozers to clear routes, downing buildings seen as threats, and blowing up Hamas' underground tunnel network. Experts say the operations to neutralise tunnels were extremely destructive to surface infrastructure. For example, if a 1.5-kilometre long tunnel was blown up by Israeli forces, it would not spare homes or buildings above, said Michael Milshtein, a former Israeli army intelligence officer.'There's no other way to destroy a tunnel.' Cemeteries, schools, hospitals and more were targeted and destroyed, he said, because Hamas was using these for military purposes.Secondary blasts from Hamas explosives inside these buildings could worsen the damage. The way Israel has repeatedly returned to areas it said were under its control, only to have militants overrun it again, has exacerbated the destruction, Savill said. That's evident especially in northern Gaza, where Israel launched a new campaign in early October that almost obliterated Jabaliya, a built up, urban refugee camp. Jabaliya is home to the descendants of Palestinians who fled, or were forced to flee, during the war that led to Israel's creation in 1948. Milshtein said Israel's dismantling of the tunnel network is also to blame for the destruction there. But the destruction was not only caused from strikes on target
Conflict Middle East GAZA ISRAEL HAMAS WAR DESTRUCTION CIVILIAN CASUALTIES INTERNATIONAL LAW GENOCIDE SCORCHED EARTH
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