The Grim Reality of Gaza: Rebuilding from Total Devastation

Thu Nov 06 2025 01:54:09 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)

A stark report detailing the dire conditions in Gaza after two years of conflict, examining the landscape transformed into ruins and the challenges faced by the local population and international forces.

This article provides a firsthand account of the destruction in Gaza following a prolonged conflict. It discusses the dramatically altered landscape, the displacement of residents, and the ongoing military presence that complicates humanitarian efforts. The article also highlights the struggles for a potential peace deal and greater control for local communities amid continuing violence and destruction.

From an embankment overlooking Gaza City, there's no hiding what this war has done. The Gaza of maps and memories is gone, replaced by a monochrome landscape of rubble stretching flat and still for 180 degrees, from Beit Hanoun on one side to Gaza City on the other.

Beyond the distant shapes of buildings still standing inside Gaza City, there's almost nothing left to orient you here, or identify the neighbourhoods that once held tens of thousands of people. This was one of the first areas Israeli ground troops entered in the early weeks of the war. Since then they have been back multiple times, as Hamas regrouped around its strongholds in the area.

Israel does not allow news organisations to report independently from Gaza. Today it took a group of journalists, including the BBC, into the area of the Strip occupied by Israeli forces. The brief visit was highly controlled and offered no access to Palestinians, or other areas of Gaza. Military censorship laws in Israel mean that military personnel were shown our material before publication. The BBC maintained editorial control of this report at all times.

Asked about the level of destruction in the area we visited, Israeli military spokesman Nadav Shoshani said it was not a goal. The goal is to combat terrorists. Almost every house had a tunnel shaft or was booby-trapped or had an RPG [rocket-propelled grenade] or sniper station, he said. If you're driving fast, within a minute you can be inside of a living room of an Israeli grandmother or child. That's what happened on October 7. More than 1,100 people were killed in the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023, and 251 others taken hostage. Since then, more than 68,000 Gazans have been killed, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry there.

The ceasefire is almost a month old, but Israeli forces say they are still fighting Hamas gunmen along the yellow line almost every day. Hamas has accused Israel of violating the ceasefire hundreds of times, and Gaza's Hamas-run Health Ministry says more than 240 people have been killed as a result.

What happens in the next stage of this peace deal is unclear. The agreement has left Gaza in a tense limbo. Washington knows how fragile the situation is - the ceasefire has faltered twice already. The US is pushing hard to move on from this volatile stand-off to a more durable peace. It has sent a draft resolution to UN Security Council members, seen by the BBC, which outlines a two-year mandate for an international stabilisation force to take over Gaza's security and disarm Hamas.

But details of this next stage of the deal are thin: it's not clear which countries would send troops to secure Gaza ahead of Hamas disarmament, when Israel's troops will withdraw, or how the members of Gaza's new technocratic administration will be appointed. The local views and voices of Gaza's residents remain essential to comprehending the humanitarian needs and political future of their beleaguered community.

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