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24 months of conflict have ravaged Gaza.

The Israeli aerial assaults and ground invasion have killed more than 67,000 Palestinians according to the Hamas-controlled health ministry, almost the entire population has been forced to move, and the UN says the majority of residences have been destroyed or severely damaged.

The military operation came in response to Hamas's unprecedented cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 more were taken hostage.

Israel says it is trying to destroy the armed and administrative capacities of the Islamist group, which is dedicated to Israel's destruction and has been in control of Gaza since 2007.

A ceasefire proposal has been proposed by American 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 hand over Gaza’s governance to Palestinian technocrats, but it has refused to agree to disarmament or to giving up any future political role in Gaza’s leadership.

Gaza is only 41km (25 miles) long and 10km wide - roughly one-fourth the area of London - bordered on three sides by closed borders with Israel and Egypt and by the Mediterranean Sea to the west, where Israel imposes a blockade. It is home to over two million residents.

Scale of Destruction

More than 90% of homes are believed to be destroyed or damaged; the medical, water, and sanitation infrastructure have collapsed; and experts supported by the UN say there is starvation in Gaza City.

A UN investigative commission says Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza - even though Israel has rejected the commission’s report, labeling it as "distorted and false".

This graphic overview shows how Gaza has turned into unlivable.

Expansion of Damage

The Israeli operation first targeted northern Gaza - where it claimed Hamas fighters were hiding among the civilian population. The group refuted these allegations.

The northern town of Beit Hanoun, a mere 2km from the frontier, was one of the first areas hit by Israeli strikes. It experienced heavy damage.

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 initiated its land offensive at the conclusion of October 2023.

Simultaneously, Israel conducted aerial bombardments on the southern cities which hundreds of thousands of Gazans from the north were escaping to. By the close of November, parts of the south of the territory lay in ruins, as did a large portion of the north.

Israeli forces escalated its bombing of the southern and central regions at the start of December, before initiating a land assault on Khan Younis, and by January 2024 over 50% of structures in Gaza had been damaged or destroyed.

By the time a ceasefire was declared in early 2025 an approximately 60% of buildings across the Gaza Strip had been harmed, with Gaza City suffering the heaviest destruction. More than 46,000 Palestinians had been killed, as per the Gaza health authority.

And the devastation has continued since the truce was terminated by Israel in the month of March - including in Rafah in the south. The UN calculates over 90% of the residential buildings in Gaza have been damaged during the war.

Humanitarian Crisis

During the conflict, Hamas - which is classified as a terrorist organisation by multiple nations including Israel and the UK - and other armed groups affiliated with it have been engaged in fierce combat against Israeli forces on the ground. They have also fired thousands of rockets into Israel, particularly during the initial phase of the war.

But in Gaza, entire districts have been completely demolished, hospitals and mosques have been destroyed and agricultural land where greenhouses once stood have been reduced to sand and rubble by heavy vehicles and tanks used for demolitions by Israeli soldiers.

Israel says Hamas uses civilian buildings such as medical centers for military purposes - but the group denies these claims.

Prior to the conflict, the majority of Gaza’s population lived in its four main cities - Rafah and Khan Younis in the south, Deir al-Balah, in the centre, and Gaza City.

Within 10 days of October 7, 2023, the Israeli military campaign had compelled almost 50% to abandon their residences, as per the UN's Palestinian refugee agency.

And by the time the ceasefire was declared after 15 months, an approximately 1.9 million individuals had been internally displaced - 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 divides Gaza approximately in two, and subsequently directing people to leave a series of "safe zones" in the south.

Airdropped leaflets by the Israeli military warned people to leave ahead of operations in the area. However, not every Israeli attack are preceded by alerts.

Restricted Areas Grow

Since Israel ended the ceasefire, it has designated an increasing number of regions of Gaza as no-go zones - where limitations are enforced - or imposing displacement orders, meaning residents have been instructed to leave completely.

At first the orders to evacuate applied to two areas - in the North Gaza and Khan Younis governorates - with a “no-go” area in place along the whole border.

Aid agencies have to coordinate with the Israeli government to work within the "no-go" areas.

Israeli forces had also prevented any humanitarian aid from entering the territory at the beginning of March - accusing Hamas of diverting it. Limited aid is now permitted to enter, although aid agencies 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 extremely short supply and hospitals were rationing medications and antibiotics.

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

The Israeli Defense Minister declared on 16 April that Israel would establish protected areas in Gaza to provide a “buffer” to safeguard Israeli towns following the conclusion of hostilities - Hamas has insisted that Israeli troops must pull out from Gaza under any permanent ceasefire.

During that period nearly 70% of Gaza was impacted by Israeli restrictions - encompassing most of the North Gaza and Gaza City governorates in the north and the whole of the Rafah governorate in the south, as reported by the UN.

And in the month of May, Israel launched a ground offensive named Operation Gideon's Chariots, which Netanyahu said would aim to obtain the freedom of the 48 captives still held - 20 of whom are thought to be alive - and "complete the defeat" of the militant organization.

From that point onward the areas covered by displacement orders and other restrictions have been extended to cover 82 percent of the territory, according to the UN.

The first phase of the campaign concentrated on objectives within northern Gaza, Khan Younis, and Rafah but in the month of August Israel announced plans to capture and occupy all of Gaza City itself - which it has called the “last stronghold” of Hamas.

The city had been the most crowded part of the territory prior to the conflict, with 775,000 people living there.

Those who remained there were instructed to relocate south to al-Mawasi in the southwestern part of the Strip which Israel has designated as a “humanitarian area” - even though it has persisted in conducting lethal attacks there and which the UN said was already overpopulated and unsafe.

Hundreds of thousands of residents have thus far evacuated Gaza City, where a famine was confirmed in August 2025 by a UN-supported agency.

But hundreds of thousands more continue to stay in dire humanitarian conditions, with health and other essential services collapsing.

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