Only a few buildings were intact
US intelligence takes stock of the destruction in Gaza
December 31, 2023, 7:12 a.m
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According to Israel’s head of government, the war in the Gaza Strip will last for many more months. The infrastructure as well as the residential buildings in the densely populated area have already been largely destroyed by the fighting of the past few months. This emerges from a US secret service document.
Almost three months after the start of the Gaza war between Israel and the Islamist Hamas, the coastal strip is marked by enormous destruction. According to the US intelligence agency US Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Israel’s army dropped 29,000 bombs on the sealed-off coastal area, which is barely larger than Munich, by mid-December alone. According to the ODNI report, quoted by the Wall Street Journal, nearly 70 percent of the 439,000 houses and apartments in the Gaza Strip are damaged and destroyed.
As the US newspaper further reports, citing a World Bank analysis, 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 by the war damaged or destroyed, including the almost complete 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 Emergency Relief Office, more than 1.9 million people are now internally displaced, i.e. around 85 percent of the population. The number of Palestinians killed and identified in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war rose to 21,672, according to the Hamas-controlled health authority in Gaza.
Netanyahu: War will last for months
Israel repeatedly emphasizes that it is at war with the terrorist organization Hamas and not with the civilians in the Gaza Strip. Measures are being taken to avoid the deaths of civilians. Residents are asked to leave affected areas before attacks. Hamas uses civilians as human shields and civilian buildings to hide 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 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 1,200 people in Israel and abducted around 240 others to 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 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the military is in the process of intensifying the fighting again. “The war will continue for many more months,” Netanyahu said on Saturday, according to a statement from his office.