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Two years of conflict have ravaged Gaza.

The Israeli aerial assaults and ground invasion have resulted in over 67,000 Palestinian fatalities as reported by the Hamas-run health ministry, almost the whole populace has been forced to move, and the UN says most homes have been destroyed or severely damaged.

The military operation was launched after Hamas's unprecedented assault across the border on 7 October 2023, in which approximately 1,200 individuals were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

Israel says it is trying to destroy the armed and administrative capacities of the militant organization, which is dedicated to Israel's destruction and has been governing Gaza since 2007.

A ceasefire proposal has been proposed by American President Donald Trump and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that would halt hostilities at once. Hamas has agreed to release all captives - living and deceased - and to hand over control of Gaza to Palestinian technocrats, but it has not committed to laying down arms or to relinquishing any political involvement in Gaza’s leadership.

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

Scale of Destruction

Over nine out of ten residences are estimated to be destroyed or damaged; the healthcare, water, sanitation and hygiene systems have collapsed; and UN-backed experts say there is starvation in Gaza City.

A UN investigative commission says Israel has committed acts of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza - even though Israel has rejected the commission’s report, describing it as "inaccurate and misleading".

This visual guide shows how Gaza has turned into uninhabitable.

How the Destruction Spread

The Israeli operation first targeted northern Gaza - where it said Hamas fighters were hiding among the civilian population. Hamas denied this.

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

Israel continued to bomb Gaza City and additional cities in the north and ordered civilians to move south of the Wadi Gaza river before it initiated its land offensive at the end of October 2023.

But Israel was also launching aerial bombardments on the urban areas in the south which hundreds of thousands of Gazans from the north were fleeing towards. By the close of November, parts of the south of the territory lay in ruins, as did much of the north.

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

By the time a truce was announced in January 2025 an estimated 60% of structures throughout Gaza had been harmed, with Gaza City suffering the heaviest destruction. Over 46,000 Palestinians had been killed, as per Gaza's health ministry.

And the destruction has persisted since Israel ended the ceasefire in March - encompassing Rafah in the south. The UN calculates over 90% of the housing units in Gaza have been damaged during the war.

Humanitarian Catastrophe

Throughout the war, 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 involved in fierce combat against Israeli forces on the ground. They have also fired thousands of rockets into Israel, especially in the first months 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 reduced to debris and dust by heavy vehicles and tanks used for destruction by Israeli troops.

Israeli authorities state militants utilize civilian buildings such as hospitals for armed operations - but the group denies these claims.

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

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

And by the time the truce was implemented after 15 months, an approximately 1.9 million individuals had been forcibly relocated - they remain unable to return home.

Households have relocated multiple times as Israel changed the focus of its operation, first instructing people in the north to relocate southward of Wadi Gaza river, which divides Gaza approximately in two, and later ordering people to evacuate a series of "safe zones" in the south.

Airdropped leaflets by the Israeli army warned people to evacuate before operations in the area. However, not all Israeli strikes are preceded by warnings.

Restricted Areas Grow

Since Israel ended the ceasefire, it has designated more and more areas 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 covered two regions - in the North Gaza and Khan Younis governorates - with a “no-go” area in place along the entire frontier.

Humanitarian organizations have to coordinate with the Israeli authorities to work within the "no-go" areas.

Israeli forces had also prevented any relief supplies from entering the territory at the start of March - alleging that Hamas was diverting it. Limited aid is now allowed in, 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 closed, the majority of fresh produce were in very limited supply and hospitals were limiting distribution of medications and antibiotics.

The humanitarian organization ActionAid cautioned that a "new cycle of starvation and thirst" was imminent.

The Israeli Defense Minister announced on 16 April that Israel would establish protected areas in Gaza to provide a “buffer” to safeguard Israeli towns even after the war ended - the group has demanded that Israeli forces must withdraw from Gaza under any lasting truce.

During that period almost 70% of Gaza was impacted by Israeli restrictions - including most of the 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 launched a ground offensive named Operation Gideon’s Chariots, which Netanyahu said would seek to secure the release of the 48 remaining hostages - 20 of which are believed to be living - 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 percent of the territory, according to the UN.

The first phase of the operation concentrated on targets in Rafah, Khan Younis and northern Gaza but in the month of August Israel revealed intentions 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 before the war, with 775,000 people living there.

Individuals who stayed behind were ordered to move south to al-Mawasi in the south west of the Strip which Israel has designated as a “humanitarian area” - despite the fact that it has continued to carry out lethal attacks there and which the UN said was already overpopulated and dangerous.

Numerous residents have so far fled Gaza City, where a famine was confirmed in August 2025 by a UN-backed body.

But hundreds of thousands more remain there in severe living conditions, with health and other essential services failing.

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In September 2025, multiple nations, {including