Physical destruction

Over the two years of war, residential buildings, industrial and agricultural areas, livestock farms, public facilities, roads, and infrastructure have been destroyed. Cities, neighborhoods, and villages were systematically decimated, and today the Strip is buried under tens of millions of tons of debris. Satellite imagery shows that vast areas are no longer habitable, and experts estimate it will take years to rebuild Gaza. Hundreds of thousands of Gazans have lost their homes and livelihoods. They are forced to live in overcrowded, makeshift shelters and to rely on external humanitarian aid, which even after the ceasefire does not reach everyone, nor in sufficient quantities, due to restrictions on entry and movement.

Destruction of structures and essential infrastructure

Buildings and roads: Based on analyses of satellite imagery as of September 2025, experts have estimated that 85% of all buildings in the Strip have been destroyed or damaged, a seven-percent increase since July 2025. In Gaza City, which came under intense attack in the final weeks of the war, satellite images showed destruction or damage to 83% of buildings that previously housed around 700,000 residents. An analysis of satellite imagery from July 2025 suggests that 77% of the road network in the Strip was destroyed or damaged during the war, hindering movement and preventing humanitarian aid from reaching all residents.

According to estimates by aid organizations in October 2025, about 1.5 million Gazans are still in need of supplies for emergency shelters such as tents, blankets, and containers for water collection. The flow of equipment into the Strip is still approved only in limited quantities, and the amounts entering fall well short of the need.

Drinking water and sanitation infrastructure: Before the war, Gaza’s water supply relied on desalination facilities, wells, and boreholes, with about 10% supplied by Israel. Over the course of the war, 89% of water and sanitation facilities were destroyed or damaged, and the water supply from Israel was cut off, resuming sporadically. A major shortage of clean water expanded across the Strip, reaching life-threatening levels. In July 2025, one of the hottest months of the year, 96% of families in Gaza suffered from water insecurity. Many are forced to drink water unfit for consumption or to walk long distances and wait in long, crowded lines to obtain limited quantities of water.

On March 9, 2025, Israel cut off electricity to the water desalination plant in southern Gaza, exacerbating the plight of residents, including thousands who had been forced to move from the north to the south. The desalination plant remained without power for four and a half months, until Israel restored power on July 26, 2025.

The water supply to residents improved somewhat following the October 10, 2025 ceasefire, with the use of tankers and, as of October 20, 2025, 1,870 distribution points across Gaza operated by aid organizations, subject to access restrictions. Targeted repairs to water pipes have also begun in Gaza City. However, a full-scale, intensive recovery for the water supply system will be required before all residents can fully realize their basic right to clean water in sufficient quantities.

Electricity: Before the war, Gaza received most of its power from Israel. Since October 2023 and throughout the war, Israel blocked regular electricity supply and prevented the delivery of fuel needed to operate Gaza’s power plant. Power supplied to the desalination plant was the only exception. The extremely limited and irregular supply of fuel and extensive damage meant that generators were often unusable, further jeopardizing the operation of life-saving services.

With the ceasefire, dozens of fuel tankers were allowed into the Strip. Since the fuel is needed to run essential services, the general population remains largely in darkness. For the first time in seven months, a small amount of cooking gas was also allowed to enter Gaza. UN representatives emphasize that a steady and sufficient flow of fuel is a primary and essential condition for the start of recovery efforts.

Destruction of local food production infrastructure: The most recent assessment of agricultural damage was conducted in September 2025 by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the UN Satellite Center (UNOSAT) using satellite image analysis. It found that about 87% of agricultural land in Gaza was underwent significant damage as did 80% of greenhouses; 87% of water wells; and about 72% of fishing assets including fishing infrastructure, such as the Gaza port, boats, and fish ponds. The livestock sector was devastated, with cattle, sheep, poultry, and bees, pivotal to Gaza’s food production, almost entirely wiped out.

The visible damage was caused by deliberate actions such as bulldozing, airstrikes, shelling, and other military operations by Israel’s armed forces. This destruction of food production infrastructure, together with blocking the entry of aid and food, has been a major contributor towards the profound humanitarian crisis in the Strip and led to famine, particularly in northern Gaza. The Israeli assault not only led to the collapse of available food sources in Gaza but also inflicted serious, long-term damage that will affect the population’s capacity to produce food for years to come.

For further reading on this topic, see: The War on Food Production: The Agricultural Sector on Gisha’s website.

For an environmental impact report on Gaza up to September 2025 and recommendations for rehabilitation, see the UN Environment Program report.

Destruction as policy

The unprecedented destruction in the Gaza Strip is an integral part of the fighting. First, to reduce the risk to troops, heavy firepower was used before and during entry into neighborhoods and new areas. Moreover, the systematic destruction—deliberate rather than incidental—was driven by a regularized military and political approach. Though not officially recognized, it appears that one of the central doctrines applied by the Israeli military in Gaza is its Dahiya Doctrine, named for its use for the first time in the 2006 Lebanon War against Hezbollah in Beirut’s Dahiya neighborhood. The aim is to inflict deliberate and disproportionate destruction on civilian buildings and infrastructure. While in Lebanon several hundred buildings were destroyed, and several hundred people, including civilians, were killed within days in a single neighborhood (unacceptable in its own right), in Gaza the strikes and destruction continued for nearly two years; tens of thousands of buildings and hundreds of thousands of housing units were destroyed, and tens of thousands of people were killed, with very limited options for escape.

Moreover, from early in the fighting, government officials tasked the military with creating buffer zones in the Strip. This strategy draws on a longstanding Israeli defense doctrine, used to a degree prior to the October 7 Hamas attack, and whose effectiveness is subject to debate. Beginning in the first month of the ground invasion, the military systematically flattened an area stretching 800 to 1,500 meters from the border fence inside Gaza, covering about 16% of its total area. The Perimeter, as it is called by the military, included residential neighborhoods, schools, mosques, cemeteries, and roughly 35% of Gaza’s farmland, all of which were destroyed by military units in a process that lasted about a year and ended in December 2024. The Netzarim Corridor likewise changed from a narrow passage in the center of the Strip to a flattened area nearly the size of Tel Aviv. Soldiers who participated in creating the new Perimeter described the utter devastation in testimonies to Breaking the Silence. One called it Hiroshima.

The massive destruction in the Perimeter, which took place following evacuation orders and the forcible transfer of the area’s residents, was backed by unequivocal statements from ministers and members of Knesset about the need to seize land not only for security reasons, but also in order to exact punishment, prevent local residents from returning to their homes, and to renew Jewish settlement in Gaza. Given all this, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the destruction was not carried out solely for security reasons, but also to pave the way for forced transfer and ethnic cleansing.

In April 2025, Defense Minister Israel Katz announced that the Philadelphi Corridor, Rafah, and surrounding neighborhoods in the south would be added to the Perimeter, expanding it to about 36% of the Strip’s total area. By June 2025, large parts of Rafah, a city of 275,000 before the war and where many IDPs fled from northern Gaza at the start of the war, had been flattened. Throughout the summer, military forces, joined by civilian contractors, carried out demolitions in Khan Yunis, and in September 2025 Israel began destroying entire neighborhoods in Gaza City.

Now, with the ceasefire in effect, Israel controls more than half of the Strip. According to the 20-Point Plan underlying the ceasefire agreement, Israel will eventually withdraw to a security perimeter. While not clearly defined, it will include the Philadelphi Corridor. In other words, Israel will control a large part of the Strip even after the next phase of withdrawal.

For further reading on the perimeter and destruction in the Strip, including soldiers’ testimonies, see publications and opinion columns by Breaking the Silence:The Perimeter Deception in the Strip Exposed: The Destruction Bought Us No Security by Nadav Weiman, Executive Director of Breaking the SilenceThe Perimeter: Soldiers’ Testimonies from the Buffer Zone in Gaza, 2023–2024 (Breaking the Silence)

Destruction of culture and heritage sites

Since the war broke out, cultural sites in the Gaza Strip have been subjected to systematic and deliberate destruction. These include religious, heritage and archaeological sites, mosques, churches, universities, historic buildings, archives, and museums. International organizations, including UNESCO, the European Union, and the World Bank, estimated in February 2025 that over 53% of Gaza’s cultural and heritage sites have been destroyed or damaged. The number has since increased, and a UNESCO report published on October 6, 2025, lists 114 affected sites, most of them in and around Gaza City. In September 2025, the warehouse holding Gaza’s largest archaeological collection was bombed. After an evacuation notice from the Israeli military and thanks to international pressure that helped delay the attack by several days, the most important items were moved to a church in the hopes it would be spared; still, many artifacts were lost or broken.

Cultural institutions and heritage assets are central to the creation of a sense of belonging and personal, group, and national identity. They also serve as sources of income and drivers of development. The targeting of Gaza’s cultural treasures and physical heritage serves efforts to erase local history and obfuscate ties between the local population and their land. This stands in clear contradiction to international law, which prohibits the deliberate and systematic destruction of archaeological sites, historic structures, and cultural or religious institutions, even in times of war.

Emek Shaveh warns that beyond the widespread destruction of protected cultural sites in Gaza, given the humanitarian crisis and past experience there is also concern over appropriation and transfer of antiquities to Israel, as well as looting by private actors. As the occupying power, Israel is obligated to safeguard assets in areas under its control and to prevent state appropriation or private theft, with the goal of their eventual restoration and return to their historical locations.

For further reading, see Open letter against the destruction of cultural heritage in Gaza and the West Bank by Emek Shaveh.