A decimated Gaza marks the end of another year of Israeli bombs

Over the past year, Gaza’s infrastructure has been subjected to a devastating reality.

What once functioned under strain has been pushed beyond the point of collapse. Electricity networks, water systems, hospitals, roads and municipal services have been systematically destroyed or severely damaged, leaving daily life defined by survival.

It is not unusual for families to plan their days around the sound of generators, if fuel is available at all. Parents and children queue for hours for a few litres of unsafe water or a pack of bread.

Hospitals operate in near darkness, doctors performing life-saving procedures using mobile phones for light. Streets that once carried children to school are reduced to rubble.

Gaza’s reality is always harsh

Life in Gaza was never easy, even during the moments the outside world labelled as “normal”. For most people, life was lived with constant uncertainty. You learned not to plan too far ahead, because calm was fragile, always temporary.

There were days with electricity, when the streets felt quieter, and families allowed themselves a small sense of relief, but everyone knew it could disappear at any time.

Gaza’s infrastructure mirrors that. It was fragile long before the latest devastation of Israel’s genocidal war.

Decades of illegal Israeli blockade, repeated military assaults and tight restrictions on construction materials meant systems were always patched up, always operating on borrowed time. Nothing truly recovered.

One of the most visible losses has been electricity. Across the Gaza Strip, darkness is not an exception. Our only power plant was severely damaged and shut down due to fuel shortages; close to 80 percent of power transmission has been destroyed.

For families, this loss is felt in small, relentless ways. A mother charges her phone whenever a neighbour’s generator briefly hums to life, knowing it may be her only chance to contact family. Children do their homework by candlelight, if they do it at all. Refrigerators sit useless, food spoiling.

Access to water has also deteriorated sharply. Israel’s bombardment damaged wells, desalination plants and pumping stations. Without electricity or fuel, clean water cannot be extracted or distributed.

Over the course of our reporting on Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, we documented families lining up with plastic containers, waiting for water trucks that may or may not arrive. When they do, the water often smells of salt or metal, its taste sharp and unfamiliar. Many have no choice but to drink it anyway. Children fall sick with stomach infections. Skin rashes spread. Washing becomes a luxury.

The cumulative effect: Paralysis

Hospitals, once overstretched but functioning, now operate in crisis mode. Over the past month of fieldwork, I visited many medical facilities that have been damaged or forced out of service entirely. Those still functioning face severe shortages of medicine, equipment, electricity and staff.

I remember the depressed feeling I had after visiting two intensive care units in Gaza City and the central area of the Strip. Both were overcrowded, forced to put patients two to a bed. The dialysis machines operated under constant threat of power loss, as did operating theatres that would often go dark mid-procedure.

Harshest of all, the medical teams are often forced to make impossible decisions about who receives care and who must wait.

Beyond health and utilities, the destruction of roads, public facilities and municipal infrastructure has fractured Gaza from within: rubble-filled streets, sewage-flooded roads, slow ambulances and aid delivery. Rubbish collection has largely ceased, leading to the spread of disease. Telecommunications infrastructure has been repeatedly knocked out, isolating families and cutting people off from emergency services and the outside world.

There’s a cumulative effect of Israel’s intense bombing campaign – which is being carried out deliberately to paralyse daily life – because infrastructure systems depend on one another.

Without electricity, water cannot be pumped. Without fuel, hospitals cannot function. Without roads, aid cannot reach those in need. Each collapse accelerates the next while creating new layers of difficult living conditions.

As the year 2025 approaches its end, Gaza’s entire infrastructure no longer supports normal life; it barely sustains survival. Talking about rebuilding does not simply mean reconstructing buildings, but also the restoration of systems that allow people to live with dignity: safe water, reliable electricity, functioning hospitals, and basic public services.

Israeli strikes on Gaza are relentless as displaced endure flooded camps


_{Workers drain floodwaters in Gaza's al-Mawasi camp on December 29}

Israeli forces have carried out strikes across the Gaza Strip as they continue with their near-daily violations of the ceasefire agreement, with Israel’s genocidal war on the besieged enclave continuing apace and displaced Palestinians enduring the destruction of their few remaining possessions in flooding brought about by heavy winter rains.

Israeli air strikes on Tuesday targeted locations north of Rafah and east of Khan Younis, the Maghazi camp in central Gaza and Beit Lahiya in the north of the Strip, Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary reported.

Reporting from Gaza City, Khoudary said artillery shelling had been reported in the territory’s southern and central regions, while there had also been an attack in the Gaza City neighbourhood of Shujayea, striking close to the tent of a displaced family.

She said the latest attacks, in violation of the United States-brokered ceasefire that came into force in October, numbering nearly 1,000 now, were coming at a time of immense hardship for hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians, as heavy rains and strong winds had ravaged their makeshift camps, destroying the few possessions they had left.

Gaza’s Government Media Office said on Sunday that Israel had committed 969 ceasefire violations since it came into effect on October 10, resulting in the deaths of 418 civilians and injuries to more than 1,100.

“Palestinians are still very traumatised and anxious,” Khoudary said. “The situation on the ground continues to deteriorate as the rain continues.”


_{Displaced Palestinian children shelter inside a flooded tent in the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on December 29}

Calls to allow supplies in

Aid groups have repeatedly called for Israeli authorities to lift restrictions to allow more supplies, including shelter equipment, into the territory, where displaced families have been trying to stay dry in flimsy, battered tents that offer scant protection from the elements after months of use.

“Families here are helpless while the Israeli authorities continue to restrict all kinds of shelter into the Gaza Strip,” Khoudary said.

Officials have warned that the severe conditions also bring new dangers, with the threat of disease and illness as overwhelmed and damaged sewage systems contaminate floodwaters, as well as the risk that buildings could collapse amid heavy rain and wind.

At least two people have been killed by damaged structures falling amid the severe weather in recent days.

Trump Backs Netanyahu's "Colonial" Wars in Gaza, Iran & Beyond

UN Security Council members condemn Israel’s recognition of Somaliland

Most United Nations Security Council (UNSC) members have slammed Israel’s recognition of Somaliland at a meeting convened in response to the move, which several countries said may also have serious implications for Palestinians in Gaza.

The United States was the only member of the 15-member body not to condemn Israel’s formal recognition of the breakaway region of Somalia at the emergency meeting in New York City on Monday, although it said its own position on Somaliland had not changed.

Addressing the UNSC, Somalia’s UN ambassador, Abu Bakr Dahir Osman, implored members to firmly reject Israel’s “act of aggression”, which he said not only threatened to fragment Somalia but also to destabilise the wider Horn of Africa and the Red Sea regions.In particular, Osman said that Somalia was concerned the move could be aimed at advancing Israel’s plans to forcibly “relocate the Palestinian population from Gaza to the northwestern region of Somalia”.

“This utter disdain for law and morality must be stopped now,” he said.

The emergency meeting was called after Israel last week became the first and only country to recognise the self-declared Republic of Somaliland as an independent and sovereign state.

Al Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo, reporting from UN headquarters in New York, said that “14 of the 15 council members condemned Israel’s recognition of Somaliland”, while the US “defended Israel’s action but stopped short of following Israel’s lead”.

Tammy Bruce, the US deputy representative to the UN, told the council that “Israel has the same right to establish diplomatic relations as any other sovereign state”.

Somalia HUMILIATES Israėl at the UN Over a Dirty Scheme to Split Somalia!

Follow the money.

Trump: "Miriam Adelson…gave my campaign, indirectly and directly, $250 million — she was number one. When someone can you $250 million, I think that we should give her the opportunity to say hello. And Miriam, make it quick, be cause $250 million is not what it used to be."

https://x.com/BulwarkOnline/status/2001109618836074629

"Miriam Adelson wants to be his biggest donor, but in return she wants Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank"

https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2024-06-03/ty-article/.premium/trump-is-desperate-for-cash-but-donors-have-conditions/0000018f-df3a-db29-a3ef-ff3a27530000

Israel’s ban on aid groups to have ‘horrific’, ‘immediate’ consequences on Gaza, doctor says

Dr James Smith, an emergency physician who has volunteered in Gaza, has pushed back against Israel’s claim that the newly suspended aid groups manage a small number of programmes as “misinformation”.

“A situation that is already horrific will be made even more horrific. The changes will be immediate, and they will be ruthless,” he said.

The move is “an extension of Israel’s longstanding strategy of titrating humanitarian access and humanitarian services as a core pillar of the occupation and of the genocide”, Smith said. “Israel wants to exert totalising control over all aspects of Palestinian life, not only in Gaza but throughout occupied Palestine.”


_{View of humanitarian supplies for Gaza, with the logos of Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, and the World Health Organization, stored at Egyptian Red Crescent warehouses in the Egyptian border town of El Arish, Egypt, April 8, 2025}

New registration system for aid groups aims to ban their work in Gaza

In an attempt to legitimise the notorious aid agency backed by the US, GHF, Israeli authorities have introduced a new registration system for international organisations delivering aid to Gaza, asking them for a list of their full employees and many other details.

These organisations say this information goes against EU data protection laws and is not a legitimate request, but instead aims to get them banned from working in Gaza. Some of these aid groups have offices in the occupied West Bank and have already been going through severe limitations, including limiting the visas for international staff.

Palestinian organisations are also facing limitations to their work. I’m standing in front of the building of the Palestinian organisation Health Work Committee, one of many Palestinian organisations that Israeli forces have shut down, citing security concerns.

Which organisations are being suspended?

Israel says 37 organisations have failed to meet its new rules for aid groups working in the Gaza Strip, and are suspended starting January 1.

The most prominent organisations – which provide essential medical care, food and children’s services – include:

Palestinian Foreign Ministry condemns Israel’s move to bar aid groups from Gaza

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates has issued a statement in which it “strongly condemns” Israel’s move to issue new registration rules for relief agencies that could cut off life-saving assistance for hundreds of thousands in Gaza.

“Israel has no sovereignty over the occupied Palestinian territory, including Jerusalem,” the ministry said, adding that the work of relief agencies is welcomed by Palestinians.

The ministry said preventing those organisations from operating constitutes a breach of international law, including an advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) stating that Israel has an obligation to ensure the “basic needs” of the population in Gaza are met.

“No entity has the right to stop their services or obstruct their work,” the ministry said. “Israel does not want any witnesses to its crimes, nor does it want institutions that support the Palestinian people and prevent Israel from implementing its colonial project aimed at destroying the lives of the Palestinian people.”

Gaza NGOs urge Israel to reconsider ban on ‘live-saving’ services

A consortium of international and local NGOs has called on Israel to reconsider its suspension of 37 organisations.

The Humanitarian Country Team, which coordinates decisions across UN agencies and NGOs working in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, said it was “urging the Israeli authorities to reconsider” the move.

International NGOs, the group said, “are an essential part of the life-saving humanitarian operation” in the occupied Palestinian territory.

_{A Palestinian mother takes care of the babies as her family of six struggles to survive in a worn-out tent under harsh winter conditions in the Yarmouk camp in Gaza City, December 29}

Banned aid groups ‘not met with good faith’ from Israel: NRC

Shaina Low, communications adviser for the newly suspended Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), says Israel’s suspension of international NGOs “doesn’t come as a surprise to us”.

“It falls in line with what we’ve seen over the last two-plus years of Israeli authorities continually obstructing the operations of humanitarian aid organisations – impartial, independent, neutral, principled humanitarian agencies,” Low told Washington, DC-based National Public Radio (NPR).

NRC, which has worked in Gaza since 2009, will continue on-the-ground operations “as best as we can”, Low said. But the suspension means the organisation can no longer bring international staff to Gaza, removing a critical “extra layer of support, an extra layer of protection” for Palestinian NRC workers trying to survive the genocidal war.

Before the suspension, Low said, NRC explained to Israel that it could not supply it with a list of its national staff, both to protect their safety and to comply with European Union data protection laws.

The organisation worked with diplomats and donors “to try and engage the Israeli authorities to productively find an alternative solution … But we were not met with good faith from the Israeli authorities. We were not given any alternatives, and so this is where we are now,” Low said.

Israel’s NGO ban intends to ‘disappear’ Palestinians, breaches international law

Neve Gordon, professor of international and human rights law at Queen Mary University of London, has told Al Jazeera that Israel’s ban on aid groups is a way of “strangling” Palestinians while also breaking international law.

“This is a different kind of strategy of clamping down on the Palestinians, strangling them, hoping that they will disappear, that they will want to leave the Gaza Strip,” Gordon said.

International law requires that an occupying power must provide for civilians, Gordon said, making Israel’s latest move a “grave” violation.

“What we have seen in the past two years – and is still going on now – is the use of starvation as a method of war, by depriving the population of objects that are indispensable to their survival,” he said. “This is not something random, this is not something that is based on a certain intelligence.”

Suspension of aid organisations to further isolate Palestinians in Gaza

The suspension and withdrawal of aid organisations from Gaza will further isolate Palestinians from the outside world. Beyond the material that is brought here and provided by these organisations, there is a broader consequence: Visibility and accountability.

For two years, these organisations have helped document the genocidal acts unfolding and maintain the connection between Gaza and the outside world. Forcing them out and suspending their operations means further isolating Palestinians from the outside world so that their suffering becomes easier to overlook.

That’s the point that the Israeli military is after. The Israeli military has often publicly expressed frustration at the United Nations for impeding and hindering its operations on the ground.

It’s not the first time we see this happen. Over the course of the past two years, Israel has been after UNRWA’s relief programmes; it has vilified the UN agency, its relief programmes and staff on the ground, to the point where operations became very limited.

The creation of restrictive military zones by the Israeli military in more than 55 percent of the Gaza Strip also prevented organisations from delivering aid.

UNRWA says Palestinians in Gaza suffer from cold as Israel curbs aid

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees says its supplies are ready to enter Gaza amid heavy rain and strong winds that have battered the Palestinian enclave, but Israeli authorities are not allowing it access.

In its latest operational update, UNRWA said food parcels enough for 1.1 million people had been stored at the border, in addition to flour for 2.1 million individuals and shelter supplies for hundreds of thousands.

The Israeli authorities have not granted the agency’s international staff visas or permits to enter the occupied Palestinian territory, including Gaza, since the end of January. They also continue to block UNRWA from bringing humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.

‘Israel continues to block us whether we’re registered or not’: Oxfam

Humanitarian organisations operating in Gaza are expressing uncertainty over how Israel’s new rules will affect their work in the Strip, but noted that the humanitarian blockade Israel has imposed since March 2 had already precipitated the situation.

Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam’s policy lead in the occupied Palestinian territory, told Al Jazeera that the new Israeli requirements will prevent NGOs from operating in Israel but should not prevent them from operating inside Gaza and the West Bank, given that they’d still be registered under the Palestinian Authority (PA).

“It does impact what we can bring into Gaza, but we’ve been blocked anyway from entering materials into Gaza since March,” Khalidi said. “Israel continues to block us whether we’re registered or not and has continued to deliberately obstruct humanitarian aid regardless of these rules.”

Khalidi added that the latest measures were “part of Israel’s longstanding campaign of marginalising, isolating and smearing civil society organisations”.

Gaza’s cancer patients facing ‘death sentence’

Dr Mohammed Abu Nada, medical director of the Gaza Ministry of Health’s Cancer Centre, says his patients in the enclave are staring down “a slow death sentence”.

“The severe shortage of cancer medications, the denial of diagnostic services, and the continued closure of crossings preventing their travel abroad for treatment complete the triangle of death that threatens their lives at any moment,” he said in a statement published on the ministry’s Telegram page.

“The only way to save their lives is for them to leave the Strip for treatment,” the doctor added, calling for “urgent action” to ferry more cancer patients abroad.

In March, Israel blew up Gaza’s only specialised cancer treatment hospital.

Israel is set to suspend the operating licenses of Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam and dozens of other humanitarian aid groups in Gaza and the West Bank over alleged ties to Hamas, preventing international aid workers from entering Gaza and carrying out critical, lifesaving operations. Citing the groups' supposed support for the "delegitimization of Israel," the move is "arbitrary and highly politicized," explains Shaina Low, communications adviser for the Norwegian Refugee Council, one of the impacted groups. "This is just one more step to push out principled humanitarian actors, particularly those that speak out on behalf of the people who we're there to serve, call for accountability for rights violations and violations of international law."

Switzerland warns of catastrophic humanitarian conditions in Gaza

The Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs has said the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip has reached “catastrophic levels” and warned that harsh winter conditions are compounding the crisis.

Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis called on Israeli authorities to ensure access to humanitarian aid to Gaza, including by opening crossings to enable large-scale delivery of assistance.

The comments come a day after a similar statement was issued jointly by the foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Japan, Norway and Sweden.

UN rights chief says Israeli aid suspensions will make situation in Gaza ‘even worse’

UN rights chief Volker Turk calls Israel’s threat to suspend aid groups from operating in Gaza from tomorrow “outrageous”.

“Israel’s suspension of numerous aid agencies from Gaza is outrageous,” Turk said in a statement. “Such arbitrary suspensions make an already intolerable situation even worse for the people of Gaza,” he warned.

Israel announced that unless 37 aid organisations comply with new guidelines, which require detailed information on Palestinian staff, they will be banned from operating in Gaza.

“This is the latest in a pattern of unlawful restrictions on humanitarian access,” Turk said, pointing to Israel’s ban on the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, and “attacks on Israeli and Palestinian NGOs amid broader access issues faced by the UN and other humanitarians”.

“I urge all States, in particular those with influence, to take urgent steps and insist that Israel immediately allows aid to get into Gaza unhindered,” he said.

Belgian FM calls on Israel to lift restrictions on humanitarian aid access to Gaza

Belgian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Maxime Prevot called on Israel to remove the restrictions it placed on humanitarian access in the Palestinian territories, emphasising that humanitarian access is  “neither optional, nor conditional or political”.

“The ICJ [International Court of Justice] asserted Israel’s unconditional obligation under international humanitarian law to ensure the unhindered provision of humanitarian relief to the civilian population,” Prevot wrote on X, referring to the ICJ’s advisory opinion that Israel has an unconditional obligation under international humanitarian law to ensure the unhindered delivery of aid to civilians.

“Professional humanitarian actors like UNRWA and INGOs funded by Belgium comply with the highest standards of transparency, impartiality and independence. I reiterate my call to Israel to cooperate with all humanitarian actors in good faith, based on clear and non-politicised criteria, to maximise the delivery of aid in Palestine,” he said, calling on Israel to remove all “humanitarian access constraints”.

🇮🇱🇵🇸 (EN/FR/NL) Humanitarian access is neither optional, nor conditional or political. After impeding the work of the United Nations, the Government of Israel’s restrictive new requirements now deregister international NGO’s.

The ICJ asserted Israel’s unconditional obligation…

— Maxime PREVOT (@prevotmaxime) December 31, 2025

Displaced Palestinians prepare to usher in 2026 in Gaza


_{Children warm by the fire in Deir el-Balah next to a sand sculpture of the coming year}

Gaza’s population drops by over 10 percent in 2 years

The Gaza Strip has seen its population fall by 10.6 percent in the last two years, representing a “severe demographic haemorrhage”, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).

In its year-end update, PCBS said the Strip experienced a “sharp and unprecedented population decline of approximately 254,000 people” since Israel’s full-scale war on Gaza began in October 2023.

The bureau has tallied 70,942 deaths in the Gaza Strip, including 18,592 children and about 12,400 women.

Roughly two million people – the vast majority of the 2.2 million living in the Strip at the war’s start – have been displaced, it added.

According to the enclave’s Health Ministry, Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has killed at least 71,266 Palestinians and wounded 171,222.

Israel deployed multi-tonne truck bombs in Gaza City: Report

The Israeli military widely deployed M113 Armoured Personnel Carriers repurposed to carry between 1 and 3 tonnes of explosives in the weeks before the Gaza ceasefire on October 10, the Reuters news agency has found.

As Israeli troops pushed towards the centre of Gaza City, these powerful bombs, along with air attacks and armour-plated bulldozers, levelled swaths of buildings, according to the news agency’s analysis of drone footage and satellite images.

Three military experts consulted by Reuters said use of the vehicles as bombs was highly unusual and risked excessive damage to civilian dwellings. The reporting provides new evidence of the power of these low-tech weapons and how they came to be widely used.

_{Palestinian children sit next to a damaged armoured personnel carrier after Israeli military operations in Gaza City, November 7, 2025}

People in Gaza dread what 2026 will bring

Another year has passed, and life in Gaza is still trapped between Israel’s killing machine and the growing indifference of the world. It is another year added to our unique calendar of loss, destruction and death.

In March, I wrote about my fears that Israel might go even further in its genocidal drive than what it had already done. And it did. Israel went beyond even my darkest expectations, reaching an unimaginable level of evil. That evil marked the whole year for us in Gaza.


_{Palestinians walk past buildings destroyed by the Israeli army in Gaza City on November 25, 2025}

Israel killed nearly 7,500 students in Gaza this year: Ministry

Gaza’s Education Ministry has issued a statement, saying at least 7,488 students have been killed and 10,557 injured in Israeli attacks on the enclave in the outgoing year.

In the occupied West Bank, 38 students have been killed and 327 injured, in addition to 324 arrested, it added.

The ministry also noted that 415 teachers and administrators have been killed and 912 injured in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, and at least 48 have been arrested in the occupied West Bank.

Israel killed over 25,000 Palestinians in Gaza in 2025 alone: Media Office

Gaza’s Government Media Office has provided the latest figures on the impacts of Israel’s genocidal war in an end-of-year update:

Infrastructure:

• More than 90 percent of the Gaza Strip’s infrastructure has been destroyed, along with 80 percent of agricultural land.
• More than 112,000 tonnes of explosives were dropped on the Strip.
• Twenty-two hospitals became unusable.
• Thirty educational institutions were destroyed, and another 39 partially destroyed.
• Thirty-four mosques were destroyed, and 100 more damaged.

Housing:

• About 106,400 housing units were destroyed, and 66,000 units were damaged to the point of being uninhabitable.
• Two million people – the vast majority of Gaza’s population – were forcibly displaced.

Aid blockages:

• Gaza experienced 220 days of complete border closures.
• More than 132,000 aid and fuel trucks were prevented from entering.
• At least 500 aid workers and volunteers were killed, while 2,605 Palestinians were killed – and another 19,124 wounded – in “aid traps”.