SEE THE MAP
By Raja Abdulrahim, Helmuth Rosales, Bilal Shbair, Anjali Singhvi, Erika Solomon, Iyad Abuheweila, Abu Bakr Bashir, Ameera Harouda, Malika Khurana, Veronica Penney and Scott Reinhard
One year ago, Gaza became a battlefield as Israel began a military offensive to root out Hamas in response to the Oct 7. Hamas-led attacks. The war has left Gaza unrecognizable. Tens of thousands of people have been killed, and almost everyone living there has been displaced — many of them multiple times.
Nearly
60 percent of buildings have been damaged or destroyed in the besieged
enclave, an area about half the size of New York City. Videos and images
from before and after the war started in some of the hardest hit areas —
including Khan Younis, Gaza City and Jabaliya — reveal the magnitude of
ruin across the strip.
Israel says
its goal was to eradicate Hamas and destroy the tunnel network it built
below ground. But in that attempt, it laid waste to an area that is home
to some two million people.
54% of buildings have been likely damaged or destroyed.
In
Gaza’s south is the governorate of Khan Younis, stretching from its
eponymous medieval city, where the citadel wall stands as its historic
anchor, to the lush fields that families have tilled for generations.
Now,
the people of Khan Younis say they feel unmoored from time and place:
The square where they played, prayed and gossiped is a ghost town. The
farms that once nourished them have been bulldozed and pounded by
Israeli artillery.
Israel says such strikes are necessary to attack Hamas militants and weapons hidden in hospitals,
mosques, schools and other civilian areas. International law experts
say Israel still has a responsibility to protect civilians even if Hamas
exploits them.
Within
the city of Khan Younis, only one citadel wall remains of its
Mamluk-era fortress, ground away by centuries and wars past. It is the
city’s lodestone.
That wall has lent
its name to everything from the nearby marketplace to a space locals
called “Citadel Square.” Here, vendors set up stalls to hawk goods and
sugary concoctions and friends gathered around hookah pipes. A young oud
player nicknamed Abu Kayan came during Eid holidays to strum
Palestinian folk songs.
It was a humble outing even the most
impoverished Gazan could enjoy, with a view of the citadel wall and the
Grand Mosque on either side.
“What
made it cool was that all kinds of people met there,” said Abu Kayan,
22, whose real name is Ahmed Abu-Hasaneen. “It was a place you could
feel the spirit of our ancestors. It was a place we could hold on to and
preserve.”
Now, the citadel wall looks out over a wasteland of rubble.
“I
don’t think this place could be rebuilt,” said Abu Kayan. “Even if it
could, nothing can replace the many friends I met there who have been
killed, displaced, or fled abroad.”
Towering over the other side of the
square was the 96-year-old Grand Mosque — the place to go for Friday
prayers and staying up late into the night with family during the Muslim
holy fasting month of Ramadan.
“That
mosque was like the city’s address — the symbol of Khan Younis,” said
Belal Barbakh, 25, who once volunteered to clean its carpets and perfume
the halls before holidays.
That
address no longer exists — Israel’s military said it struck the mosque
to destroy Hamas infrastructure inside it, information The Times could
not independently verify.
These days,
Mr. Barbakh continues that ritual of cleaning and perfuming in the
small plastic tent erected as a prayer hall at the foot of the pile of
rubble that is all that remains of the Grand Mosque.
Beyond the mosque was the citadel’s
commercial district, where playful hearts, young and old, sought out
Hamada Ice Cream and the balloon-festooned Citadel of Toys.
Sisters
Asan and Elan al-Farra, 16 and 14, remember birthday parties at Hamada,
and the excitement they felt when their parents let them stop there
after shopping.
Passing by what is left of Hamada now, Elan said, is like watching the
color drained out of her childhood: “It’s depressing seeing a place that
was so bright end up black, battered, and dirty.”
Just a few meters away are the pancaked
floors of the building once home to the Barbakh brothers and their
families — and their Citadel of Toys.
Abdulraouf Barbakh opened the toy store on the ground floor, indulging a childhood obsession with “any and all toys.”
During
Eid celebrations, he welcomed a parade of children who marched in,
clutching the holiday money their relatives had given them, eager to buy
a long coveted doll, ball or water gun.
“I
loved to see that smile of pure joy on children’s faces, especially for
a people like ours that have suffered so much,” he said.
War has razed the Barbakh building to the ground, and the siblings and cousins who lived there are scattered.
Outside the remnants of their family
building, Mr. Barbakh’s nieces and nephews sometimes linger, looking for
signs of toys that survived beneath the ruins.
Mr. Barbakh cannot imagine going back to being a purveyor of joy to children.
“My only wish is to rescue my family from this war,” he said. “I have no plans to buy any more toys.”
The
verdant Khuza’a region of Khan Younis, the breadbasket of southern
Gaza, is land Jamal Subuh’s family has plowed for over a century. His
children still remember their first time helping their father with the
harvest, and the taste of the melons, tomatoes and peas they had picked
fresh off the vine.
Mr. Subuh shared an image of what his cropland looked like before the war.
Gaza’s farmlands represented a rare
source of self-sufficiency in an area that has endured a decades-long
blockade by Israel and Egypt.
“From
generation to generation, we handed down a love of farming this land,”
said Mr. Subuh, who was ordered off his property by Israeli military
officials. “We eat from it, make money from it and feed the rest of our
people from it.”
For Mr. Subuh, his
fields were a chance to leave the next generation better off than his
own: Each year, he farmed more lands, to pay for his son’s veterinary
school and his daughter’s agricultural engineering degree.
He
estimates that miles upon miles of fields have been bulldozed, his
crops crushed. Advancing Israeli troops destroyed hundreds of thousands
of dollars’ worth of tractors, water pumps and other equipment. The
image provided here is the closest Mr. Subuh has been able to get to his
land since the war began.
According to the U.N. Food and
Agricultural Organization, some 41 percent of the Gaza Strip is
cropland. Of that land, it said some 68 percent has been damaged.
After
decades of nourishing Gazans, the Subuh family now relies on
humanitarian handouts at a displacement camp in central Gaza.
Mr.
Subuh expects it would take years to extricate all the unexploded
ordinances, replow his fields and ensure the earth is clean of toxic
substances that may have seeped into the ground.
Sometimes
he regrets not giving up farming sooner, like many Gazan farmers had in
previous wars. Yet he mourns the potential end of his farm.
“I had a relationship with that land,” he said. “We had a history together, and I am heartbroken.”
Still, his daughter, Dina, refuses to give up: “I won’t lose my will to plant and care for this land again.”
74% of buildings have been likely damaged or destroyed.
Gaza
City, the strip’s capital, is home to the ancient Old City, as well as
Al-Rimal, a once-vibrant, upper-middle-class neighborhood. The war has
torn through the area’s cultural and religious landmarks, including the
oldest mosque in Gaza.
Al-Omari
Mosque, wrecked by the war, was the heart of the Old City. It had been a
place of worship for thousands of years — evolving as the area’s
rulers changed. The ruins of a Roman temple became the site of a
Christian Byzantine church in the fifth century, then was repurposed
into a mosque in the seventh century.
For Gazans, the unusual architecture of the mosque set it apart from other Muslim houses of worship.
rom other Muslim houses of worship.
Arab Ambience In December, the mosque was all but destroyed
in an airstrike by the Israeli military, which said the site had become
a command center for Hamas, information that The Times could not
independently verify. The strike toppled much of the mosque’s minaret
and ruined most of its stone structure — including walls with carved
Arabic inscriptions.
Ahmed Abu Sultan used to spend the last
10 days of Ramadan worshiping, sleeping and eating in Al-Omari Mosque.
For him, the mosque had spiritual echoes of Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem,
a sacred site for Muslims.
“The
atmosphere you feel in Jerusalem when you enter the Al-Aqsa Mosque and
the Dome of the Rock, you feel the same atmosphere when you enter the
Al-Omari Mosque,” Mr. Abu Sultan said.
Seven
months before the war began, he took two of his sons — then 8 and 9
years old — to spend a night at Al-Omari during Ramadan, with hopes of
beginning an annual tradition. “I wanted to plant this connection in my
children,” he said
To mark another rite of passage, generations of Gazans have passed through the Gold Market abutting the mosque.
Riyad
Al-Masri, 29, grew up seeing his brother and other older male relatives
shop for jewelry for their brides in the tiny shops under the arched
ceilings.
Mr. Al-Masri and his wife,
who have been living apart because of the war, had shopped at the market
soon after they became engaged in February 2023. Presenting the bride
with gold jewelry is a long-standing tradition in Palestinian wedding
culture.
“These rituals, we all went
through them,” he said. “My older brother, my father, my grandfathers,
we would get engaged and then go to the Gold Market with our fiancées
and buy what they wanted.”
What remain are shuttered doors and piles of debris.
Al-Rimal was one of the first targets of Israeli airstrikes.
For
decades, the neighborhood had been the center of commerce, trade,
academia and entertainment in Gaza. On any given day, Gazans could be
seen strolling through the Unknown Soldier Park, a welcome green space
in the midst of a busy city.
Many
Gazans who visited the park, along Omar Al-Mukhtar Street, could enjoy
slushies in the summer or a warm custard drink in the winter from the
nearby ice cream parlor, Qazim
The park was a gathering place for rallies and protests. When past wars ended in a cease-fire deal, people celebrated there.
Now
the park has been razed and bulldozed. The Palestine Bank tower, along
with other buildings overlooking the square, has been gutted and
damaged.
Not far away, the Rashaad Shawa center, which housed the oldest library
in the Gaza Strip, has been severely damaged. The first cultural center
in Gaza, it once stored the strip’s historical archives, passports and
other documents of families who moved to the strip.
mong the businesses that made Al-Rimal a destination for Gazans was
Shawerma Al-Sheikh, known for its single menu item. It, too, wasn’t
spared by the war.
Opened in 1986 as a single meat spit, it had inspired restaurants from
the north to the south. It was initially called “The People’s
Cafeteria,” but it soon took on a different name after one of its
owners, Ihsan Abdo, became known for dressing like “a sheikh” with a
long robe and white turban.
Back in the 1950s, the neighborhood was
mostly an empty, sandy expanse. Al-Rimal, which means sands in Arabic,
was named for its terrain.
As nearby
Gaza City areas began to get overcrowded, traders and businessmen
started to buy land in Al-Rimal. There they built large homes and
multistory buildings, bringing their trades with them into ground-floor
shops and storefronts.
“These
landmarks have memories and imprints in the heart of every person who
came to Gaza,” said Husam Skeek, a community and tribal leader.
81% of buildings have been likely damaged or destroyed.
The
town of Jabaliya in the north, which had a role in one of the most
pivotal moments of modern Palestinian history, has now become a byword
for Gaza’s destruction.
As
descendants of Palestinians who fled or were driven from their homes in
1948, many in Jabaliya say this war has evoked a sense of
transgenerational trauma. Some describe it as reliving the “Nakba,” or
catastrophe: The loss of land, community, and above all, home.
Nowhere
has that loss felt as potent as in Al-Trans, the heart of Jabaliya’s
social life and its history as a place to protest every power that has
controlled Gaza — from Israel to Hamas.
Al-Trans is one of the areas that has
been decimated by several Israeli incursions into Jabaliya, where the
Israeli military repeatedly used 2,000-pound bombs.
Israel
says Jabaliya is a stronghold for Hamas and other militants responsible
for the Oct. 7 attacks. After a strike near Al-Trans last October, the
Israeli military told The Times that it had destroyed a “military fighting compound” and a tunnel that had been used by Hamas. But locals describe the extent of the destruction as collective punishment.
Named
after the first electricity transmitter erected in the area, Al-Trans
intersection stood at the center of Jabaliya — figuratively and
geographically. This is where people went to shop for groceries, get
their hair done, meet friends — and, perhaps most significantly, to
protest.
“Jabaliya, and Al-Trans specifically,
was a place of change,” said Fatima Hussein, 37, a journalist from the
town. “Whenever we have confronted a regime or oppressive force — no
matter what that force was — the movement started here.”
In
1987, protests against Israeli occupation that started in Al-Trans set
off the First Intifada. Locals rebelled against their own leaders, too:
The 2019 “We Want to Live” protests took off from Al-Trans, voicing
growing popular anger over repressive Hamas rule.
“Our
creativity, our awareness, it was born out of suffering,” said Ahmed
Jawda, 30, a protest organizer born in Jabaliya. “Suffering makes you
insist on living life.”
That
creativity was present in local businesses like the Nahed Al-Assali
furniture store. In an enclave struggling with poverty, Al-Assali became
hugely successful by offering bargain prices and pay by installment.
“The
secret of our success was taking people into consideration,” said
Wissam, Nahed’s brother and business partner. “We went easy on people,
especially with the price.”
Al-Assali
was where newlyweds furnished their new home, and pilgrims purchased
prayer rugs. Now it is a pile of charred concrete.
Gone, too, is the Rabaa Market and Cafe,
where friends lingered for hours to gossip, and activists planned their
protests. So is Abu Eskander Cafe, the local nut roastery, and the
Syrian Kitchen, a restaurant so popular that locals simply called it
“The Syrian.”
The loss of the landmarks that mapped Gazans’ most cherished memories makes the notion of rebuilding seem impossible to many.
The war has no end in sight. Even if it were to stop today, the cost of rebuilding Gaza would be staggering.
In the first eight months alone, a U.N. preliminary assessment said, the war created 39 million tons of rubble, containing unexploded bombs, asbestos, other hazardous substances and even human remains. In May, a World Bank report estimated it could take 80 years to rebuild the homes that have been destroyed.
But for Gazans, neither time nor money can replace all that has been lost.
If
the trauma of previous generations of Palestinians was displacement,
Mr. Jawda said, it is now also the feeling of an identity being erased:
“Destroying a place destroys a part of who you are.”
THE NEW YORK TIMES
original article with images
