War in the Middle East
Report: Gaza is a landscape of shattered concrete
According to US media, 70 percent of the houses in the Gaza Strip are damaged or destroyed. photo
© Ariel Schalit/AP/dpa
The Gaza war has been raging for almost three months now. The enormous intensity of Israeli attacks continues. The destruction in the sealed-off coastal strip on the Mediterranean is enormous.
As the US newspaper further reported, citing a World Bank analysis, as of December 12, 77 percent of health facilities, 72 percent of municipal facilities such as parks, courts and libraries, 68 percent of telecommunications infrastructure and 76 percent of commercial areas had been damaged by the war damaged or destroyed, including the almost complete destruction of the industrial zone in northern Gaza.
“The word ‘Gaza’ will go down in history like Dresden and other famous cities that were bombed,” the newspaper quoted Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, as saying. According to the UN Emergency Relief Office, more than 1.9 million people are now internally displaced, i.e. around 85 percent of the population.
Israel says it wants to protect civilians
Israel repeatedly emphasizes that it is at war with Hamas and not with the civilians in the Gaza Strip. Measures are being taken to avoid the deaths of civilians. Residents are asked to leave affected areas before attacks. Hamas uses civilians as human shields and civilian buildings to hide entrances to underground tunnels. According to Israel, a number of Hamas terrorists are hiding in such tunnels and are also holding hostages from Israel there. The terrorists also use the tunnels to appear out of nowhere and attack from behind.
The war was triggered by the worst massacre in Israel’s history on October 7, in which terrorists from Hamas and other extremist groups murdered around 1,200 people in Israel and abducted around 240 others to the Gaza Strip. Israel responded with massive air strikes and a ground offensive. The government’s goal is the complete destruction of Hamas. The number of Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war rose to 21,672, according to the Hamas-controlled health authority in Gaza. The number cannot currently be independently verified.