Gaza is a broken city. A blind giant appears to have trampled entire parts of the metropolis of 1.2 million inhabitants. Since the October 7 Hamas massacres in southern Israel, the Israeli army’s indiscriminate bombings have largely ruined the country. The army is searching for an enemy hiding among the civilian population, but is also punishing an entire city that Israeli authorities have found guilty of Hamas crimes from the start.
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All that remains of Gaza City’s remote northern suburbs are charred carcasses, leveled by the attacks that prepared the October 28 ground invasion. Within three weeks, armored vehicles and infantry took control of the western half of the enclave’s capital, slowly advancing under heavy air support that pierced numerous craters along the boulevards of Rimal and surrounding areas. Hospitals. On Sunday, November 19, fighting broke out again in downtown Gaza. The Israeli army reiterated on Monday that it is “expanding its operations in new districts,” particularly in Jabaliya.
Since Friday, November 17, the infantry has been advancing towards the narrow streets of the old town, the city center and the city center eastern half of Gaza. What will be left in a few weeks when Israel announces that Hamas has been driven out? The Palestinian Authority’s Public Works Ministry estimated that as of Sunday, 25% of the inhabited areas of the city and its northern region had already been destroyed.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that at least 58% of homes across the enclave are destroyed or damaged. Examination of satellite photos using software developed by the Bellingcat site makes it possible to conservatively estimate that 40 to 50% of buildings in Gaza City were destroyed or damaged by November 16 – and up to 70% of the Al-Khati refugee camp Directly at the sea.
Stroll through the four corners of the city
The authorities in Ramallah are compiling endless lists: They count 280 damaged educational institutions and more than 200 places of worship. All but one of Gaza’s hospitals are at a standstill. The water and electricity distribution networks are unusable. A quarter of the roads in the enclave were damaged.
“Gaza is already destroyed. It is nothing more than a ghost town populated by a few hundred thousand displaced people. [800 000, selon l’Autorité palestinienne]. The Israelis wanted to punish one of the oldest cities in the world by attacking its universities, its bookstores, its large hotels, its parliament and its ministries, laments Ehab Bsaiso, former culture minister of the Palestinian Authority. On November 13, a giant music teacher, Elham Farah, was injured by shrapnel on the street. She bled to death on the sidewalk and died. It is a whole social mosaic, a culture that they are wiping out, and soon the tanks will be heading towards the Archaeological Museum and the old Orthodox church of Saint-Porphyrius, whose annex was bombed on October 19th. » This high-ranking official, who comes from an old family in the Gaza Strip, follows his relatives’ migration to all corners of their hometown and the blockaded enclave by telephone with a heavy heart from Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank.
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