War in the Middle East - Report: Gaza is a landscape of shattered concrete
Almost three months after the start of the Gaza war between Israel and the Islamist Hamas, the coastal strip on the Mediterranean is marked by enormous destruction. As the "Wall Street Journal" reported on Saturday, citing the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Israel's army had dropped 29,000 bombs on the sealed-off coastal area, which is barely larger than Munich, by mid-December alone. Almost 70 percent of the 439,000 houses and apartments in the Gaza Strip had been damaged and destroyed, it said.
The US newspaper further reported, citing a World Bank analysis, that as of December 12, 77 percent of health facilities, 72 percent of municipal facilities such as parks, courts and libraries, 68 percent of telecommunications infrastructure and 76 percent of commercial areas had been damaged or destroyed by the war, including the near-total destruction of the industrial zone in northern Gaza.
"The word "Gaza" will go down in history like Dresden and other famous cities that were bombed," the newspaper quoted Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, as saying. According to the UN Office of Emergency Relief, more than 1.9 million people are now internally displaced, i.e. around 85 percent of the population.
Israel says it wants to protect civilians
Israel repeatedly emphasizes that it is at war with Hamas and not with the civilians in the Gaza Strip. Measures are being taken to prevent the death of civilians. For example, residents are asked to leave affected areas before attacks. Hamas uses civilians as human shields and civilian buildings to conceal entrances to underground tunnels. According to Israel, a number of Hamas terrorists are hiding in such tunnels and are also holding hostages from Israel there. The terrorists also use the tunnels to emerge from nowhere and attack from behind.
The war was triggered by the worst massacre in Israel's history on October 7, in which terrorists from Hamas and other extremist groups murdered around 1200 people in Israel and abducted around 240 others in the Gaza Strip. Israel responded with massive air strikes and a ground offensive. The government's goal is the complete destruction of Hamas. According to the Hamas-controlled health authority in Gaza, the number of Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war has risen to 21,672. The figure cannot currently be independently verified.
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Source: www.stern.de
