Eight months of war have destroyed more than 55% of the structures in Gaza, according to the latest report from the UN Satellite Centre. The enclave’s main towns have been devastated by Israeli bombardment, rendering them almost uninhabitable. The destruction has been called an example of “urbicide” – the deliberate, utter destruction of an urban area.
“All the houses have been turned into ruins. We’re lost, we don’t know exactly where our homes are in the midst of this massive destruction,” said Mohammad al-Najjar, 33, in an interview with AFP on June 1 in the Jabaliya camp in the north of the Gaza Strip.
Eight months of war and intense bombardment by the Israeli military has turned most of Gaza into a heap of ruins, as confirmed by photos and satellite images.
“A total of 137,297 structures, or around 55% of structures in Gaza, are affected,” noted the United Nations Satellite Centre (Unosat) in a report published on May 31.
Unosat, whose mission is to provide satellite image analysis during humanitarian emergencies and armed conflict, publishes monthly images of the Gaza Strip.
The satellite images from May 3 this year were compared with those taken on October 7, 2023, the day Hamas staged a deadly attack on southern Israel and the eve of the start of the war.
“According to our analysis, we identified 36,591 destroyed structures, 16,513 severely damaged, 47,368 moderately damaged, and 36,825 possibly damaged structures. A total of 137,297 structures, or about 55% of the total in Gaza, are affected,” Unosat noted.
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Buildings used for housing were by far the worst hit, with 135,142 housing units damaged. But the bombs also struck schools, hospitals, cultural and religious sites, water and electricity infrastructure, roads and bridges. Gaza City, Khan Younis and northern Gaza have been the hardest-hit areas.
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Researchers have used the term “urbicide” to describe vast swaths of bombed-out cities and deserted towns. It is not a word found in many dictionaries, and has no precise legal definition. But it is increasingly being used to describe the wars in Ukraine and in Gaza.
Urbicide: the murder of cities
“The word ‘urbicide’ means the killing of cities (‘urbs’ + ‘cide’). More generally, it refers to the deliberate, widespread destruction of the urban environment. It refers to more than just the destruction of strategic targets or houses, but a wide range of urban fabric,” explains Martin Coward, head of the School of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary University of London.
“It is deliberate and not proportional to the strategic goals of war, and therefore violates the laws of war. Urbicide implies that this violence destroys something specific to the city – the plural, shared nature of the city. It is a way of making it impossible for those that are different to you to live in an urban space.”
The starting point for Coward’s research was the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, when urbicide was frequently practiced.
“The destruction of cities was about preventing people from coming back. So even after a heavily shelled city was under the control of a particular armed force, they would still go in and do things like dynamite houses. They would dynamite mosques and make them into a car park.”
Destroying cities has historically been used as a way to evict people considered to be the enemy – recent examples include Sarajevo, Grozny in Chechnya, Aleppo in Syria, Mosul in Iraq, and Mariupol and Bucha in Ukraine.
“The deliberate killing of civilians is a crime, but there is also the long-term destruction of all the infrastructure necessary for people’s lives,” says Coward. “Explosive weapons destroy the fabric of the city, particularly infrastructure, meaning that it becomes unliveable even for civilians who aren’t killed.”
If you look at Bakhmut or other cities that are on the front line of the Ukraine-Russia war, “you see exactly this kind of pattern of destruction”, he says.
Three hundred bombs a day dropped on Gaza
In the case of the Gaza Strip, the means used by the Israeli army since the start of the war against Hamas have been “disproportionate and inappropriate”, says Guillaume Ancel, a former French army artillery officer and writer. “Binyamin Netanyahu had two stated objectives: to destroy Hamas militarily and to free the hostages. When you use one-tonne bombs, you’re not targeting anything – you’re destroying,” says Ancel, who publishes the blog Ne pas subir (Never give in).
“A terrorist organisation is a shadow army; you don’t hunt it down with bombs. You don’t free hostages with mass shelling. It’s completely contradictory. From the start, the means used were incompatible with the stated aim.”
For its part, the Israeli army says it “reviews targets before strikes and chooses the proper munition in accordance with operational and humanitarian considerations, taking into account an assessment of the relevant structural and geographical features of the target, the target’s environment, possible effects on nearby civilians, critical infrastructure in the vicinity, etc.”
The army adds that “the clear majority of munitions used in strikes are precision-guided munitions”.
By the end of the first week of the war against Hamas in October 2023, Israel had dropped 6,000 bombs on the Gaza Strip.
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A report by the NGO Handicap International released in December highlighted the “unprecedented scale” of the offensive on Gaza. In the first seven weeks of the war, 12,000 bombs weighing between 150kg and 1,000kg were dropped on Gaza, which the group calls “one of the most intense bombing campaigns in history against a populated area”.
By comparison, the US dropped 7,423 bombs in Afghanistan in all of 2019, according to US Central Command.
Ancel notes that Gaza is hit by “300 bombardments a day, which is colossal”, adding: “The Israeli army has dropped thousands of one-ton bombs, which are designed to devastate an entire area, not a military target.”
The Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, rejected all criticism of its tactics in response to questions from FRANCE 24. “There is no IDF doctrine that aims to cause maximal damage to civilian infrastructure regardless of military necessity,” an army spokesman said. “IDF actions are based on military necessity and in accordance with international law. The IDF’s sole objective is to neutralise the threat posed by Hamas. Any claims about intentionally making Gaza uninhabitable are baseless and ignore the primary culpability of Hamas in the ongoing conflict.”
The war has left major Gazan heritage sites in ruins, including the Great Omari Mosque (Gaza’s largest and oldest), Palestine Square, Anthedon Harbour, the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius, and the Pasha’s Palace Museum, whose structure was originally built in the 13th century.
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According to a recent UNESCO report, 50 heritage sites have been damaged or destroyed since October 7. This despite the fact that Israel signed the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, whose signatories pledge to protect cultural sites in wartime.
Uninhabitable for decades
The destruction caused by explosive weapons has turned Gaza into a huge open-air refugee camp. Palestinians live on mattresses in rubble or in makeshift tents.
Rendered homeless, they are victims of “domicide”, an extension of the concept of urbicide meaning the deliberate and systematic destruction of people’s homes. “Even if Israel stops shelling Gaza tomorrow, it’s impossible for people to live there” because of the lack of infrastructure, Coward says.
It will take years to clear the rubble, make sure there are no unexploded bombs or missiles left, and clear mines. The enclave will be uninhabitable for decades.
“We’ve never seen such a level of destruction of infrastructure,” notes Ancel, drawing on his experiences as an army officer in Sarajevo and Mostar in the former Yugoslavia.
“There will no longer be the facilities that will enable people to live together in the territory of Gaza. They will simply be trying to survive. These conditions always provoke a mass exodus of populations. I’m convinced that as soon as the war ends, the Palestinians will want to emigrate en masse, even if they have to swim across the Mediterranean; they’ll do anything to leave the ravaged territory of Gaza. Netanyahu will be able to say, ‘It wasn’t me who drove them into exodus’.”
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What will become of Gaza when the war ends? While no plan for administering the enclave has been approved, some members of Netanyahu’s government readily provided their vision for the future.
Gila Gamliel, Israel’s minister of intelligence, published an op-ed in the Jerusalem Post in November in which she suggested scenarios for the post-war era.
“[One] option is to promote the voluntary resettlement of Palestinians in Gaza, for humanitarian reasons, outside of the [Gaza] Strip. It is important that those who seek a life elsewhere be provided with that opportunity. […] Instead of funnelling money to rebuild Gaza or to the failed UNRWA (the UN agency for Palestinian refugees), the international community can assist in the costs of resettlement, helping the people of Gaza build new lives in their new host countries,” she wrote.
Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu, of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, even advocated dropping an atomic bomb on the Palestinian enclave. The prime minister disavowed these remarks.
Read moreFrom outrage to hate: In the wake of October 7, Israel’s far right seeks to extend its influence
Ancel believes that emptying Gaza of its inhabitants is the undeclared goal of the Israeli prime minister.
“What Netanyahu is hoping for is that the Palestinians will leave the Gaza Strip and that the Israelis will be able to begin an effort to colonise the area. But how could it be justified to world opinion that, under the pretext of self-defence, the Israeli army went in to destroy and perpetrate a massacre in Gaza?”
“The terrible thing for Israeli society is that not only will it not have peace – it has just guaranteed Hamas recruitment for the next 20 years – but it will also not be able to justify 70,000 or more deaths in Gaza. In addition to the 37,000 victims declared by Hamas, we must add the 12,000 people missing, people who are still buried under the rubble. At present, the civil authorities are unable to count the dead. And that’s not to mention the number of wounded.”
The Israeli military blames Hamas for the human toll and asserts that it is “making various efforts to reduce the damage caused to civilians”.
“As has been well documented, Hamas and other terror organisations unlawfully embed themselves and their military assets in densely populated civilian areas. The IDF is locating and destroying terror infrastructure and military assets that are embedded, among other things, inside buildings, within these civilian areas. In certain cases, large parts of neighbourhoods in the Gaza Strip are converted into combat complexes which are utilised for ambushes, command-and-control centres, weapon warehouses, combat tunnels, observation posts, etc.”
‘Urbicide is not a legal concept’
Is the systematic and deliberate destruction of a territory a crime?
“Urbicide is not a legal concept,” says Johann Soufi, a specialist in international law and a former head of UNRWA’s legal office in Gaza. “It’s a notion that makes it possible to specify a broader crime and makes it easier for the public to understand.”
Soufi says that international law already has the necessary statutes on the books to bring legal action when urban areas are targeted in conflicts. “The most important thing today is to accurately describe the systematic destruction of Palestinian housing in Gaza, and then to use the instruments already at our disposal to be able to characterise this destruction,” he adds.
“If the aim of systematically destroying housing is to prevent Gazans from remaining on their territory, to force them to move, then this is a war crime or a crime against humanity. If the intention is to deprive them of their homes in order to bring about their physical destruction, or to create living conditions likely to bring about their physical destruction, then this is genocide.”
But the charge does not feature in the international arrest warrants requested by International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Kahn on May 20 for Binyamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh, Mohammed Deif and Yahya Sinwar.
Read moreICC’s bold move on Gaza warrants brings fresh scrutiny of Prosecutor Karim Khan
All are accused of “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” in the Gaza Strip and Israel.
“The arrest warrant requested by Karim Khan also includes a charge against Israeli leaders for intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population,” which is a violation of the Rome Statute’s articles on war crimes, notes Soufi.
As for crimes against humanity, “what is far more complicated to establish is whether there is the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”, Soufi says.
Céline Bardet, a lawyer specialising in war crimes and founder of the NGO We Are Not Weapons of War, says establishing such crimes relies on proving intent. The destruction of more than half of the buildings in Gaza “may be categorised as a crime when they have been bombed or attacked disproportionately or without military purpose”.
“We need to analyse this on a case-by-case basis,” she says. “There’s nothing in the law of war to prevent the targeting of buildings, if this is considered a relevant military objective. We’ve seen this in both Gaza and Ukraine.”
Can modern warfare be conducted without the massive destruction of cities and urban spaces? Coward would like to believe so. Even if international law today is incapable of preventing urbicide, Coward says that it is also important to raise awareness.
“Destroying buildings and everyday infrastructure makes territories unliveable for generations. We need to establish a kind of moral consensus so that states choose acceptable military actions.”
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Legal arguments about the proper conduct of war will continue, but for now, reconstruction is a more pressing issue.
Rebuilding the infrastructure of the Gaza Strip looks like a Herculean task. According to estimates by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), it will take up to $40 billion and many years to achieve. A task “not faced by the international community since the Second World War“, said Abdallah al-Dardari, director of the UNDP’s Regional Bureau for Arab States, in early June.
Despite the fear of new Israeli military operations, Gazans living amid the ruins and rubble of the Jabaliya camp refuse to leave.
“We will stay on our land,” Gaza resident Mohammad al-Najjar told AFP. “We have nowhere else to go.”