🔗 Share this article

24 months of fighting have ravaged Gaza.

The Israeli bombing campaign and ground invasion have killed more than 67,000 Palestinians as reported by the Hamas-controlled health authority, almost the entire population has been forced to move, and the UN states most homes have been destroyed or severely damaged.

The offensive came in response to Hamas’ unprecedented cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 more were captured.

Israel says it is attempting to dismantle the armed and administrative capacities of the Islamist group, which is committed to the elimination of Israel and has been governing Gaza since 2007.

A ceasefire proposal has been put forward by American President Donald Trump and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that would end the fighting immediately. The group has consented to release all captives - alive and dead - and to hand over control of Gaza to Palestinian technocrats, but it has refused to agree to laying down arms or to relinquishing any political involvement in Gaza’s leadership.

Gaza is only 41km (25 miles) long and 10km wide - about a quarter of the size of London - surrounded on three sides by closed borders with Egypt and Israel and by the Mediterranean coast to the west, where Israel imposes a blockade. It is home to over two million residents.

Scale of Destruction

Over nine out of ten residences are believed to be destroyed or damaged; the medical, water, and sanitation infrastructure have collapsed; and UN-backed experts say there is starvation in Gaza City.

A UN investigative commission says Israeli forces have perpetrated acts of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza - even though Israel has rejected the findings of the commission, labeling it as "distorted and false".

This graphic overview shows how Gaza has become in large parts uninhabitable.

Expansion of Damage

Israel's campaign initially focused on northern Gaza - where it said Hamas fighters were concealed within the civilian population. Hamas denied this.

The town in the north of Beit Hanoun, a mere 2km from the frontier, was among the initial locations hit by Israeli strikes. It sustained heavy damage.

Ongoing Israeli airstrikes targeted Gaza City and other urban centres in the north and instructed residents to relocate southward of the Wadi Gaza river before it launched its ground invasion at the end of October 2023.

But Israel was also launching air strikes on the southern cities which numerous Gaza residents from the north were escaping to. By the close of November, parts of the south of the territory lay in ruins, as did much of the north.

Israel intensified its airstrikes on southern and central Gaza at the beginning of December, before launching a ground offensive on Khan Younis, and by January 2024 over 50% of Gaza's buildings had been destroyed or damaged.

By the time a truce was announced in January 2025 an estimated 60% of buildings across the Gaza Strip had been damaged, with Gaza City suffering the heaviest destruction. Over 46,000 Palestinians had been killed, according to Gaza's health ministry.

And the destruction has continued since Israel ended the ceasefire in March - encompassing Rafah in the south. The UN estimates over 90% of the residential buildings in Gaza have been damaged during the war.

Humanitarian Catastrophe

During the conflict, Hamas - which is designated as a terrorist organisation by multiple nations including Israel and the UK - and additional factions allied to it have been engaged in intense battles against Israeli forces on the ground. They have also launched numerous projectiles into Israel, especially in the first months of the war.

However, within Gaza, whole neighborhoods have been razed to the ground, hospitals and mosques have been obliterated and farmland where greenhouses previously existed have been turned into debris and dust by heavy vehicles and tanks used for demolitions by Israeli troops.

Israeli authorities state militants utilize civilian buildings such as hospitals for military purposes - but Hamas denies that.

Prior to the conflict, most of Gaza's 2.1 million people lived in its primary urban centers - Rafah and Khan Younis in the south, Deir al-Balah, in the centre, and Gaza City.

In just 10 days of 7 October 2023, Israel’s offensive had forced nearly half to abandon their residences, as per the UN's Palestinian refugee agency.

And by the time the truce was implemented 15 months later, an estimated 1.9m people had been forcibly relocated - they continue to be unable to go back.

Families have moved repeatedly as Israel changed the emphasis of their campaign, first instructing people in the north to relocate southward of Wadi Gaza river, which cuts the Strip roughly in half, and later ordering people to evacuate a series of "evacuation zones" in the south.

Leaflet drops by the Israeli military alerted residents to evacuate before military actions in the region. However, not all Israeli strikes are preceded by alerts.

Expansion of Restricted Zones

After the truce was terminated, it has designated more and more areas of Gaza as prohibited areas - where limitations are enforced - or imposing displacement orders, meaning Gazans have been told to evacuate entirely.

Initially the orders to evacuate covered two areas - in the North Gaza and Khan Younis governorates - with a “no-go” area in place along the entire frontier.

Aid agencies have to coordinate with the Israeli authorities to operate in the "no-go" areas.

Israel had also blocked any relief supplies from entering Gaza at the start of March - accusing Hamas of diverting it. Limited aid is now permitted to enter, although relief groups still say it is insufficient.

By the start of April all the UN-supported bakeries in Gaza had been shut down, most fresh vegetables were in very limited supply and medical facilities were limiting distribution of medications and antibiotics.

The NGO ActionAid cautioned that a "renewed period of hunger and dehydration" loomed.

Israel’s defence minister declared on 16 April that Israel would set up security zones in Gaza to provide a “buffer” to safeguard Israeli towns following the conclusion of hostilities - the group has demanded that Israeli troops must pull out from Gaza under any lasting truce.

At the time almost 70% of Gaza was impacted by Israeli restrictions - including most of the North Gaza and Gaza City governorates in the north and the entire Rafah governorate in the south, as reported by the UN.

And in May, Israel initiated a land operation named Operation Gideon's Chariots, which the Prime Minister stated would seek to secure the release of the 48 captives still held - 20 of whom are thought to be alive - and "complete the defeat" of the militant organization.

From that point onward the areas covered by displacement orders and other restrictions have been extended to cover 82 percent of the territory, according to the UN.

The initial stage of the campaign focused on targets in northern Gaza, Khan Younis, and Rafah but in August Israel announced plans to seize and control all of Gaza City itself - which it has called the “last stronghold” of Hamas.

The city had been the most densely populated part of the territory prior to the conflict, with 775,000 people residing there.

Those who remained there were instructed to relocate south to al-Mawasi in the south west of the Strip which Israel has designated as a “humanitarian area” - despite the fact that it has continued to carry out lethal attacks there and which the UN said was already overcrowded and dangerous.

Numerous residents have so far fled Gaza City, where a famine was confirmed in August 2025 by a UN-supported agency.

But hundreds of thousands more continue to stay in dire humanitarian conditions, with health and other essential services collapsing.

International Response

In September 2025, multiple nations, {including