Scale of destruction shows Israel wanted to make Gaza City unliveable
The pattern of devastation and destruction feeds into one conclusion: Make the whole place unliveable by removing the population. Create very difficult conditions on the ground, so they can pack up and leave.
That’s exactly the results that we are seeing.
But despite all of this, we’ve seen people walking back. When we talk to them, they tell us that they don’t have any other options but to go back to their homes because they belong to this area.
UN estimate for Gaza reconstruction costs ‘very conservative’
Yousef Daoud, an economics professor at Birzeit University in the occupied West Bank, says primary attention in Gaza should be focused on allowing in aid and medicines.
“The next priority would be the basic necessities of water, electricity, energy and housing. Obviously, the housing issue is a very demanding issue because it cannot be resolved quickly. It’s not something that you can fix overnight,” Daoud told Al Jazeera from the West Bank.
Daoud added that he did not think the UN’s estimation of $50bn for rebuilding the Strip would be “sufficient”.
“If you say there’s 1.9 million people with an average family size of five to six people, that requires about 350,000 units, and at current prices prevailing in the West Bank, that means more than $50bn just for housing,” he said.
“Then you need to have the roads, the water, the power, the schools, the hospitals, the universities. All that adds up. So 50 is a very conservative estimate,” Daoud explained.
Israeli army redeployment line cuts Palestinians off from most of Gaza’s agricultural land
Eyal Weizman, who heads the UK-based research group Forensic Architecture, says the so-called “yellow line” to which Israeli forces have withdrawn under the ceasefire deal roughly matches Gaza’s “coastal sand dune”.
That leaves Gaza “without the absolute majority of its agricultural areas on the fertile soils in the east”.
An August report from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization found that, as of July 28, more than 86 percent of Gaza’s cropland – totalling nearly 13,000 hectares (32,000 acres) – was damaged by Israel’s war on the enclave.
You can see more about how Israel destroyed Palestinians’ ability to feed themselves in our interactive report from July 2024, here.
This aerial image from the 1960s shows that the 'yellow line' of Israel's redeployment in Gaza is roughly matching with the border of the area's coastal sand dune, leaving Gaza without the absolute majority of its agricultural areas on the fertile soils in the east. pic.twitter.com/pwZLO5OyeO
— eyal weizman (@weizman_eyal) October 11, 2025
