Collapsed buildings, mangled infrastructure, streets turned into fields of rubble.Scenes of violence and destruction in the long-blockaded Gaza Strip have filled the world’s airwaves throughout four wars and countless rounds of hostilities between Israel and Hamas militants. But this conflict, Palestinians say, is different.
On Tuesday, following a night of intense bombardment, residents were struggling to grasp the sheer scale of damage inflicted on Gaza City’s upscale Rimal neighborhood, with its shopping malls, restaurants, residential buildings and offices belonging to aid groups and international media far from the territory’s hard-hit border towns and impoverished refugee camps. Israel has hit Rimal, also home to Hamas government ministries, in the 2021 war, but never like this.
Israeli bombs blew out walls and ripped off roofs of upper-class apartment towers. They toppled trees that had lined the sidewalks. They uprooted streets that had teemed with businessmen hustling to work and vendors hawking roasted nuts. They leveled mosques and university buildings and wrecked high-rise offices of companies and organizations like Gaza’s main telecommunications company and Bar Association.
Among those broad boulevards full of beauty salons, falafel shops and pizzerias beat the heart of Gaza City. For many, the magnitude of the devastation there, affecting the territory’s middle and upper classes, had symbolic significance. “Israel has destroyed the center of everything,” said Palestinian businessman Ali al-Hiyak from his home near Rimal. “That is the space of our public life, our community.” “They are breaking us,” he added.
After Gaza’s Hamas rulers mounted the deadliest attack on Israel in decades, killing over 1,000 people and taking dozens hostage in a multi-pronged offensive, Israel unleashed what Gaza residents described as the most intense bombing campaign in recent memory, with hundreds of airstrikes Monday night. Residents said the Israeli military struck some buildings without first firing warning missiles as a precaution. The civilian death toll has been rapidly rising.
