🔗 Share this article

24 months of fighting have devastated Gaza.

Israel’s aerial assaults 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 says the majority of residences have been damaged or destroyed.

The offensive was launched after Hamas's unprecedented cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 more were taken hostage.

Israel says it is trying to destroy the armed and administrative capacities of the Islamist group, which is dedicated to Israel's destruction 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 halt hostilities at once. Hamas has agreed to release all captives - alive and dead - and to hand over Gaza’s governance to Palestinian technocrats, but it has not committed to disarmament or to relinquishing any future political role in the leadership of Gaza.

Gaza is merely 41km in length and 10km in width - about a quarter of the size of London - bordered on three sides by closed borders with Israel and Egypt and by the Mediterranean coast to the west, where Israel imposes a blockade. It is home to more than 2 million people.

Scale of Destruction

More than 90% of homes are believed to be destroyed or damaged; the medical, water, and sanitation infrastructure have collapsed; and experts supported by the UN 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, describing it as "distorted and false".

This graphic overview shows how Gaza has turned into uninhabitable.

Expansion of Damage

The Israeli operation first targeted the northern part of Gaza - where it claimed militants were concealed within the civilian population. Hamas denied this.

The town in the north of Beit Hanoun, a mere 2km from the border, was among the initial locations hit by airstrikes. It sustained severe destruction.

Israel continued to bomb Gaza City and other urban centres in the north and ordered civilians to move south of the Wadi Gaza river before it launched its ground invasion at the conclusion of October 2023.

But Israel was also launching air strikes on the urban areas in the south which hundreds of thousands of Gazans from the north were fleeing towards. By the end of November, parts of the south of the territory lay in ruins, as did a large portion of the north.

Israeli forces escalated its bombing of the southern and central regions at the start of December, before launching a ground offensive on Khan Younis, and by the start of 2024 more than half of Gaza's buildings had been destroyed or damaged.

By the time a truce was announced in January 2025 an approximately 60% of buildings across the Gaza Strip had been harmed, with Gaza City experiencing the most severe damage. More than 46,000 Palestinians had been fatally wounded, as per the Gaza health authority.

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

Humanitarian Crisis

Throughout the war, Hamas - which is classified as a terrorist organisation by multiple nations including Israel and the UK - and additional factions affiliated with it have been involved in intense battles against Israeli forces on the ground. They have also fired thousands of rockets into Israel, particularly during the initial phase of the war.

But in Gaza, whole neighborhoods have been completely demolished, hospitals and mosques have been destroyed and farmland where greenhouses previously existed have been turned into sand and rubble by armored vehicles and machinery used for destruction by Israeli soldiers.

Israel says Hamas uses civilian buildings such as hospitals for armed operations - but the group denies these claims.

Before the war, most of Gaza's 2.1 million people lived in its four main cities - Rafah and Khan Younis in the south, Deir al-Balah city, in the centre, and the city of Gaza.

In just 10 days of 7 October 2023, the Israeli military campaign had forced nearly half to abandon their residences, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

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

Households have relocated multiple times as Israel changed the focus of its operation, first instructing people in the north to relocate southward of the Wadi Gaza waterway, which divides Gaza approximately in two, and later ordering people to leave a number of "safe zones" in the south.

Leaflet drops by the Israeli army warned people to leave ahead of operations in the area. However, not every Israeli attack are preceded by alerts.

Expansion of Restricted Zones

Since Israel ended the ceasefire, it has designated more and more areas of Gaza as no-go zones - where limitations are enforced - or making them subject to evacuation directives, meaning residents have been instructed to leave completely.

At first the evacuation orders covered two regions - in the North Gaza and Khan Younis governorates - with a “no-go” area in place along the entire frontier.

Aid agencies have to co-ordinate with the Israeli authorities to work within the "no-go" areas.

Israeli forces had also prevented any relief supplies from entering the territory at the start of March - accusing Hamas of diverting it. Limited aid is now allowed in, although relief groups still say it is insufficient.

By the start of April all the UN-supported bakeries in Gaza had been closed, the majority of fresh produce were in very limited supply and hospitals were rationing painkillers and antibiotics.

The humanitarian organization ActionAid cautioned that a "renewed period of hunger and dehydration" was imminent.

Israel’s defence minister announced on 16 April that Israel would establish protected areas in Gaza to provide a “buffer” to safeguard Israeli towns even after the war ended - the group has demanded that Israeli forces must withdraw from Gaza under any lasting truce.

At the time nearly 70% of Gaza was impacted by limitations imposed by Israel - encompassing most of the North Gaza and Gaza City governorates in the north and the whole of the Rafah governorate in the south, according to the UN.

And in the month of May, Israel launched a ground offensive named Operation Gideon’s Chariots, which Netanyahu said would seek to obtain the freedom of the 48 remaining hostages - 20 of which are believed to be living - and "complete the defeat" of the militant organization.

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

The first phase of the campaign concentrated on objectives within northern Gaza, Khan Younis, and Rafah but in the month of August Israel revealed intentions to seize and control the entire city of Gaza itself - which it has referred to as the “last stronghold” of Hamas.

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

Individuals who stayed behind were instructed to relocate south to al-Mawasi in the southwestern part of the Strip which Israel has designated as a “humanitarian area” - even though it has persisted in conducting deadly strikes there and which the UN said was already overcrowded and dangerous.

Hundreds of thousands of residents have so far fled Gaza City, where a starvation was verified in August 2025 by a UN-backed body.

But many more thousands remain there in dire humanitarian conditions, with medical and vital services failing.

International Response

In September 2025, multiple nations, {including