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24 months of fighting have ravaged Gaza.

Israel’s aerial assaults and military incursion have killed more than 67,000 Palestinians as reported by the Hamas-controlled health ministry, almost the whole populace has been displaced, and the UN states most homes have been destroyed or severely damaged.

The military operation was launched after Hamas’ unprecedented cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 more were captured.

Israel says it is trying to destroy the military and governing capabilities of the Islamist group, which is committed to the elimination of Israel and has been governing Gaza since 2007.

A ceasefire proposal has been put forward by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that would end the fighting immediately. Hamas has agreed to release all captives - alive and dead - and to transfer Gaza’s governance to Palestinian technocrats, but it has refused to agree to laying down arms or to giving up any future political role in the leadership of Gaza.

Gaza is only 41km (25 miles) long and 10km wide - about a quarter of the size of London - bordered on three sides by sealed frontiers with Israel and Egypt and by the Mediterranean Sea to the west, where Israel imposes a blockade. It is inhabited by over two million residents.

Scale of Destruction

More than 90% of homes are believed to be damaged or destroyed; the healthcare, water, sanitation and hygiene systems have broken down; and experts supported by the UN say there is famine in Gaza City.

A UN investigative commission says Israeli forces have perpetrated acts of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza - even though Israeli officials have dismissed the commission’s report, describing it as "distorted and false".

This graphic overview shows how Gaza has turned into unlivable.

Expansion of Damage

Israel's campaign initially focused on northern Gaza - where it said militants were hiding among the non-combatant residents. Hamas denied this.

The northern town of Beit Hanoun, only 2km (1.2 miles) from the border, was one of the first areas struck by airstrikes. It experienced severe destruction.

Ongoing Israeli airstrikes targeted Gaza City and other urban centres in the north and instructed residents to move south of the Wadi Gaza river before it launched its ground invasion at the end of October 2023.

But Israel was also launching aerial bombardments on the southern cities which numerous Gaza residents from the north were escaping to. By the end of November, parts of the south of the territory lay in ruins, as did much of the north.

Israel intensified its bombing of the southern and central regions at the beginning of December, before initiating a land assault on Khan Younis, and by the start of 2024 more than half of structures in Gaza had been destroyed or damaged.

By the time a truce was announced in early 2025 an approximately 60% of buildings across the Gaza Strip had been damaged, with Gaza City experiencing the most severe damage. More than 46,000 Palestinians had been fatally wounded, according to Gaza's health ministry.

And the destruction has continued since Israel ended the ceasefire in the month of March - including in Rafah in the south. The UN estimates more than 90% of the residential buildings in Gaza have been damaged during the war.

Humanitarian Catastrophe

During the conflict, the militant group - which is classified as a terror group by multiple nations including Israel and the UK - and additional factions allied to it have been engaged in intense battles against Israeli forces on the ground. They have also fired thousands of rockets into Israel, particularly during the initial phase of the war.

However, within Gaza, whole neighborhoods have been razed to the ground, hospitals and mosques have been obliterated and farmland where greenhouses previously existed have been turned into debris and dust by armored vehicles and machinery used for destruction by Israeli troops.

Israeli authorities state militants utilize non-military structures such as hospitals for armed operations - but the group denies these claims.

Prior to the conflict, most of Gaza's 2.1 million people lived in its four main cities - Khan Younis and Rafah in the south, Deir al-Balah, in the centre, and Gaza City.

Within 10 days of October 7, 2023, Israel’s offensive had forced nearly half to abandon their residences, as per the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

And by the time the ceasefire was declared 15 months later, an estimated 1.9m people had been forcibly relocated - they remain unable to return home.

Families have moved multiple times as Israel changed the focus of its operation, first instructing people in the north to move south of the Wadi Gaza waterway, which cuts the Strip roughly in half, and subsequently directing people to evacuate a series of "safe zones" in the south.

Airdropped leaflets by the Israeli army warned people to evacuate before military actions in the region. However, not every Israeli attack are preceded by warnings.

Restricted Areas Grow

Since Israel ended the ceasefire, it has designated an increasing number of regions of Gaza as no-go zones - where restrictions are in place - or making them subject to evacuation directives, meaning Gazans have been told to evacuate entirely.

Initially the evacuation orders applied to two areas - in the North Gaza and Khan Younis governorates - with a “no-go” area in place along the entire frontier.

Humanitarian organizations have to co-ordinate with the Israeli government to operate in the "no-go" areas.

Israeli forces had also prevented any humanitarian aid from entering Gaza at the start of March - alleging that Hamas was diverting it. Limited aid is now permitted to enter, although relief groups still say it is nowhere near enough.

By the beginning of April every bakery supported by the UN in Gaza had been shut down, most fresh vegetables were in very limited supply and medical facilities were limiting distribution of painkillers and antibiotics.

The NGO ActionAid cautioned that a "renewed period of hunger and dehydration" loomed.

The Israeli Defense Minister declared on April 16 that Israel would set up security zones in Gaza to create a protective barrier to safeguard Israeli towns even after the war ended - the group has demanded that Israeli troops must pull out from Gaza under any permanent ceasefire.

At the time nearly 70% of Gaza was impacted by limitations imposed by Israel - including the majority of North Gaza and Gaza City governorates in the north and the entire Rafah governorate in the south, as reported by the UN.

And in May, Israel initiated a ground offensive named Operation Gideon's Chariots, which Netanyahu said would aim to secure the release of the 48 captives still held - 20 of which are thought to be alive - and "complete the defeat" of the Palestinian armed group.

Since then the regions affected by displacement orders and other restrictions have been expanded to include 82% of Gaza, as per the UN.

The initial stage of the campaign focused on targets in Rafah, Khan Younis and northern Gaza but in the month of August Israel announced plans to seize and control all of Gaza City itself - which it has referred to as the “last stronghold” of Hamas.

The city had been the most crowded part of the territory before the war, with 775,000 people residing there.

Those who remained there were ordered to move south to al-Mawasi in the south west of the Strip which Israel has designated as a “humanitarian area” - even though it has continued to carry out deadly strikes there and which the UN said was already overpopulated and dangerous.

Numerous residents have thus far evacuated the city of Gaza, where a famine was confirmed in August 2025 by a UN-supported agency.

But many more thousands remain there in dire humanitarian conditions, with health and other essential services failing.

International Response

In September 2025, several countries, {including