Gaza City: Walking through rubble, where a city and its stories are being erased
The morning felt like the end of a long winter. Smoke hung low over Gaza City, a gray ribbon that blurred concrete and sky, while the ordinary noises of neighborhood life — children’s voices, vendors’ calls, the distant hum of generators — slipped into the background like a forgotten refrain.
Then the buildings came down. Not in a slow, cinematic way, but as the sudden collapse of lives: entire apartment blocks imploded by explosions, balconies reduced to twisted rebar, rooms flattened into rubble. By Gazan health authorities’ count, at least 31 people were killed in a series of residential strikes that flattened several buildings. Among the dead were a pregnant woman and her two small children.
Faces in the dust
“We dug with our hands until they told us to stop,” Mosallam Al-Hadad told me, eyes rimmed in red, his voice breaking more from incredulity than grief. “My son is still under the sheets of his own home, but the rest — the mother, the young ones, the child in her belly — all gone. You can’t say this is war without the word murder following it.”
His son, he said, survived but with a wounded body: rushed to hospital, his leg amputated. Around them, relatives sifted through concrete and clothes, folding shirts coated in dust as if the act could make sense of what they were losing.
A bicycle wheel clattered against cracked pavement as a man edged past collapsed staircases toward a line of displaced families. Nearby, women with pots and pans queued for soup handed out by charities; the air smelled of coffee, diesel, and the cigarette tang of too much fear.
The offensive widens — and so does the displacement
Israel’s tanks have pressed deeper into Gaza City, moving from neighborhood to neighborhood, from the densely packed lanes of Tel al-Hawa toward the western districts. Witnesses describe a choreography of armored vehicles and infantry moving through streets that were never designed for such machinery.
“There’s nowhere safe here,” said Amal Rashid, a teacher who fled with her two daughters. “Shelters are full. We move and move and someone always tells us to move farther. My eldest keeps asking when we will go home. I don’t have an answer.”
The scale of displacement is staggering. The Israeli military estimates more than 450,000 people have left Gaza City since early September. Hamas disputes that count, saying just under 300,000 have left and estimating roughly 900,000 people still remain. For a territory of roughly 2.3 million inhabitants, these are movements on a scale that define an emergency.
Numbers on the ground — contested and tragic
Beyond displacement, the human toll is further clarified in competing tallies: Israeli officials say 1,200 people were killed in the attacks of 7 October 2023 and that 251 were taken hostage. Gazan health authorities, meanwhile, report more than 65,000 Palestinians killed during the two-year-long campaign, with most victims described as civilians. Independent verification in many cases remains difficult because humanitarian access is severely restricted.
And the violence is not one-directional. In southern Israel, sirens again sounded when rockets were fired from Gaza; one intercepted by defensive systems, another landing in open ground. No casualties were reported there, but the echo of danger crosses both skies and borders.
Voices of protest, voices of despair
Back in Jerusalem, thousands gathered outside the prime minister’s residence late into the night. The crowd was a patchwork of grief and anger: relatives of those taken hostage, veterans, and young people demanding a different path. “We can’t keep losing our people and hope the answer is only more war,” said Michel Illouz, whose son was kidnapped. “We want a deal. We want them back.”
Such scenes underline one of the war’s bitter ironies: a territory pulverized by conflict simultaneously produces relentless domestic pressure to bring hostages home and to end the fighting. The politics is intimate and raw; the stakes are human and immediate.
Global ripples
The offensive has drawn sharp rebukes abroad. Some Western governments have signalled moves to formally recognise Palestinian statehood — a diplomatic earthquake timed ahead of the UN General Assembly. Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, was reported to be preparing such a recognition, a break from long-standing policy that illustrates how the war is reshaping alliances and prompting re-evaluations of long-held positions.
“Politics often lags behind suffering,” said Dr. Laila Nasser, an international law scholar in Beirut. “But once it catches up, the decisions — recognition, sanctions, humanitarian corridors — reflect a new calculus about responsibility and moral urgency.”
What’s needed now
The city’s immediate needs are brutally simple and painfully vast: shelter, surgical care, clean water, electricity for life-saving equipment, and safe passage for civilians and aid. Yet logistics are hampered by the fighting: roads are impassable, hospitals are overwhelmed, and aid convoys face delays and denials.
- Clean water and sanitation — to prevent disease in crowded shelters
- Medical supplies and staff — for trauma care and maternal health
- Food and fuel — for generators and cooking
- Safe corridors — to allow the wounded and non-combatants to evacuate
“About 70% of Gaza’s medical infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed in some areas,” said a humanitarian coordinator who asked to remain anonymous to speak freely. “When a pregnant woman’s house is hit — and she dies with a child in her belly — you feel the fault line in our collective conscience.”
Why this matters to you
It’s easy, from a distance, to reduce this to numbers and headlines. But each statistic is a household, a schoolroom, a story. When a child whispers, “When will we go home?” they are asking for something every human understands: a life not suspended by fear.
What does accountability look like in urban warfare? How do international laws meant to protect civilians stand up against the logic of artillery and armored advance? And as global capitals reassess their relationships with Israel and the Palestinians, what protections will be secured for ordinary people caught between geopolitics and rubble?
These are not abstract questions. They are the questions a father asks as he wraps a blanket around a toddler on the side of a road; the questions a nurse asks as she counts the empty beds where patients once lay. They are the questions the world must answer — not in press releases, but in concrete, sustained action.
As the sun set over the wounded city, people gathered around small fires and shared what little they had. They traded stories more than goods — names, memories, instructions for keeping safe. The city’s outline is changing, but its human core endures. For now, that core is fragile, loud, and urgently in need.
