Gaza has become a satellite in the war. When the fighting stops, many fear the city will remain uninhabitable

Jerusalem (AFP) – Israel Military attack It has turned much of northern Gaza into an uninhabitable lunar zone. Entire neighborhoods have been wiped out. Homes, schools and hospitals were bombed from the air and burned by tank fire. Some buildings are still standing, but most are destroyed shells.

Nearly one million Palestinians have fled the north, including its urban centre, Gaza City, as ground fighting intensifies. When the war ends, any relief will soon be overshadowed by terror, as displaced families come to terms with the situation The scale of the disaster And what it means for their future.

Where will they live? Those who wish Ultimately managing Gaza And Pick up the pieces?

“I want to return to my home even if I have to sleep on the ruins of my home,” said Youssef Hammash, a relief worker with the Norwegian Refugee Council who fled the ruins of Jabalia refugee camp in southern Gaza. “But I don’t see a future for my children here.”

The Israeli army’s use of powerful explosives in crowded residential areas – which Israel She describes it as the inevitable outcome Hamas’ use of civilian sites as a cover for its operations – resulting in the deaths of more than 13,000 Palestinians and It led to stunning devastation. Hamas denies this allegation and accuses Israel of recklessly bombing civilians.

“When I left, I couldn’t identify which street or intersection I was crossing,” said Mahmoud Jamal, a 31-year-old taxi driver who fled his hometown in northern Beit Hanoun this month. He described apartment buildings that resembled outdoor parking lots.

Emily Tripp, director of Airwars, told conflict monitors in London that the Israeli bombing had become one of the most intense air campaigns since World War II. In the seven weeks since the establishment of Hamas The unprecedented October 7 attackIsrael has fired more munitions than the United States has in any year in its bombing campaign against Islamic State – a barrage that the United Nations describes as the deadliest urban campaign since World War II.

In grainy Israeli thermal footage of airstrikes targeting Hamas tunnels, fireballs obliterate everything in sight. Videos published by Hamas’ military wing show fighters carrying rocket-propelled grenades wandering through smoke-filled streets. Fortified bulldozers cleared the lands in front of Israeli tanks.

“Northern Gaza has turned into a big ghost town,” said Mukhaymar Abu Saada, a political science professor at Al-Azhar University in Gaza City, who fled to Egypt last week. “People have nothing to go back to.”

Nearly half of the buildings across northern Gaza were damaged or destroyed, according to an analysis of Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite data by Corey Shear of the Graduate Center at the City University of New York and Jamon van den Hoek of Oregon State University. With the United Nations estimating that 1.7 million people are newly homeless, many wonder if Gaza will ever recover.

“You will end up with displaced people living in tents for a long time,” Raphael Cohen, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, told a research group.

The war has knocked 27 of 35 Hospitals All parts of Gaza are out of service, according to the World Health Organization. The destruction of other critical infrastructure has consequences for years to come.

“Bakeries and grain mills have been destroyed, as have agriculture, water and sanitation facilities,” said Scott Ball, a senior humanitarian policy advisor at Oxfam America. “You need more than four walls and a roof for a place to be habitable, and in many cases people don’t have that.”

Across the Strip, more than 41,000 homes – 45% of Gaza’s total housing – are too damaged to live in, according to the United Nations.

“It was all I left at home Corpses Satellite data analysis showed that the beach had suffered nearly 14,000 incidents of war damage – ranging from an air raid crater to a collapsed building, said Mohammed Al-Haddad, a 28-year-old party organizer who fled the Beach refugee camp along Gaza City’s coastline. – On an area of ​​only 0.5 square kilometers (0.2 square miles).

According to the analysis, southern Gaza – where food, water and fuel scarcity has created a humanitarian crisis – was spared the heaviest fires.

But this is changing. In the past two weeks, satellite data has shown a significant rise in damage across the southern city of Khan Yunis. Residents say that the army has bombarded the eastern parts of the city with evacuation warnings.

Israel urged the residents of southern Gaza to move again towards a piece of land called… My condolences Along the coast. Ace ThursdayIsrael and Hamas are still working out the details of a four-day truce that would allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza and facilitate the exchange of humanitarian aid. Palestinian prisoners in Israeli hostels.

Displaced Palestinians said that four days would not be enough.

“This is our catastrophe,” said 32-year-old journalist Tariq Hajjaj, referring to the mass displacement of an estimated 700,000 Palestinians during the 1948 war that followed the creation of Israel — a mass exodus Palestinians call “exodus.” “Nakba” or “disaster”.

Although the Palestinians publicly reject the idea of ​​being transferred out of Gaza, some privately admit that they cannot stay, even after the war ends.

Hajjaj, who fled his home in Shujaiya, east of Gaza City, said: “We will never return to our homes.” “Those who stay here will face the most terrible situation they can imagine.”

The 2014 war between Israel and Hamas leveled Shujaiya, turning the neighborhood into fields of inert gray rubble. The $5 billion reconstruction effort there and across Gaza remains incomplete to this day.

“This time the extent of the destruction is significantly higher,” said Giulia Marini, international advocacy officer at the Palestinian human rights center Al Mezan. “It will take decades for Gaza to return to what it was before.”

It is still unclear who will take charge of this task. at recent days Security summit in BahrainJordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi pledged that Arab countries “will not come and clean up the mess after Israel.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants the army to restore security, and American officials paid The seemingly unlikely scenario of the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority taking control of the Strip.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whom many Palestinians consider weak, I refused This idea is in light of the absence of Israeli efforts towards a two-state solution.

Despite the horrors of war, Yasser El-Sheshtawy, a professor of architecture at Columbia University, hopes that reconstruction will provide an opportunity to transform Gaza’s crumbling refugee camps and long-deteriorating infrastructure into a “more habitable, more equitable and more humane place,” including public parks. and the revitalized waterfront. .

But Palestinians say it’s not just the destroyed infrastructure that needs rebuilding, it’s the traumatized community.

“Gaza has become a very scary place,” Abu Saada said. “It will always be filled with memories of death and destruction.”

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Complete AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.