Gaza lives in a cycle of destruction and construction since Israel evacuated the enclave in 2005 and Hamas took absolute power two years later. Since then, there has been a chain of attacks by Palestinian militias and Israeli military responses. However, none more intense than the current Iron Swords operation.
The UN estimates that in seven weeks of non-stop bombing, some 46,000 homes have been completely destroyed and more than 230,000 have suffered more than 50% damage. This means that 60% of family units are uninhabitable. As a result, there are 1.7 million homeless people who will take many months, if not years, to re-home. They are 80% of the population of Gaza.
The intensity of the bombing of such a dense urban area can only be compared, according to the UN, with the worst air campaigns of the Second World War. The same holds Emily Tripp, director of Airwars, an organization dedicated to the observation of conflicts based in London. “During the first week of the war alone, Israel dropped six thousand bombs,” he told AP. And during the seven weeks of the campaign, Israel has dropped more bombs than the United States has in any of the years it has fought the Islamic State (IS).
The victims are, for the most part, women and children. According to the count of the health authorities in Gaza – fairly reliable in previous Israeli military operations – more than 15,000 people have died, of which at least 6,500 were children, and 4,000 were women. The proportion remains between the more than 36,000 injured (75% women and children) and the approximately seven thousand missing (70% women and children), victims who must be buried under the rubble of destroyed homes.
Israel, through military spokesmen, claims that “the main reason” for so many dead civilians and so much destruction is that Hamas has camouflaged itself among the population.
Hamas, for its part, estimates that around 40,000 tons of bombs have fallen since October 7 and that the main objective of these bombings has been to “turn Gaza into an uninhabitable place”.
During the first two weeks of the war, 90% of the munitions used by the Israeli army were very heavy bombs, 450 kilos and also 900 kilos, guided by satellite, according to an analysis by PAX, the main pacifist organization in the Netherlands.
The United States, when it fought the Islamic State in Mosul and Al-Raqqa, did not use bombs of such a caliber. He considered anyone over 220 kilos too large for an urban area. The risk of causing serious damage to the civilian population was too high. It did not compensate for any strategic advantage.
Israel insists that only with the heaviest bombs has it been able to destroy a large part of the Hamas tunnels, a priority military target.
Destruction is particularly extensive north of the strip, according to data from CUNY and Oregon universities.
In Beit Hanun, a population of 52,000, not a single building remains, according to satellite images and Israeli journalists who have visited it.
Further south, in the refugee camp of Al-Xati, an area of ??just half a square kilometer, 14,000 “war damages” have been registered, that is, from a destroyed building to the crater of an explosion Only 30% of lescasas remain. Likewise, the damage is enormous in the south of the strip, in towns such as Khan Iunis and Rafah.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has counted 279 schools (51% of the total) among the damaged buildings.
The WHO confirms that only nine of the 35 hospitals are operational, thus confirming a figure from the Palestinian health services. He also warns that many more people may now die from disease than from bombs. Access to drinking water, for example, remains very difficult due to the destruction of infrastructure and the lack of fuel.
OCHA reports that the last flour mill was destroyed on November 15. Without flour, water or electricity you cannot make bread, a staple food in any conflict zone. There is no operational bakery in Gaza.
Before the war, around 500 trucks entered the strip every day with humanitarian aid and all kinds of construction materials. Now, since the truce was decreed on November 24, barely 150 enter every day. The United Nations agency for Palestine Refugees estimates that around 200 are needed a day for two months to meet the basic needs of the population. In addition, many tanker trucks would have to enter to feed the desalination plants, generators and sewage pumps.
Before October 7, Gaza had not yet recovered from the previous war. The reconstruction work has never stopped. Over the past fifteen years, the international community has provided around 5 billion dollars to rebuild buildings that had been reduced to rubble by Israeli bombing.
Shelter Cluster Palestine, an aid consortium coordinated by the UN, states that the destruction in the north of the strip “very seriously compromises the possibility that there are the basic requirements to sustain life”.
Even if the war ends today, it will be years before the population can recover normality. In Mosul (Iraq), a city of 1.8 million inhabitants destroyed in 2017 during the US war against the Islamic State, reconstruction is far from complete. Six years have passed. In Gaza, everything indicates that many more will be needed.