Gaza: Israeli Bombardment Destroyed Over 70% Of Houses

Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza for nearly three months has destroyed 70 percent of the homes in the besieged Palestinian enclave, according to the Government Media Office.

No further details were provided but an earlier report said more than 200 heritage and archaeological sites were destroyed in the Israeli bombardment considered the most destructive in modern history.

About 300,000 out of 439,000 homes have been destroyed in Israeli attacks, a Wall Street Journal report said. Analysing satellite imagery, the report added that the 29,000 bombs dropped on the strip have targeted residential areas, Byzantine churches, hospitals and shopping malls and all civilian infrastructure has been damaged to an extent that they cannot be repaired.

“The word ‘Gaza’ is going to go down in history along with Dresden [Germany] and other famous cities that have been bombed,” Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago who has written about the history of aerial bombing, told WSJ.

In nearly two months, the offensive has wreaked more destruction than the razing of Syria’s Aleppo between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine’s Mariupol, or, proportionally, the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II. It has killed more civilians than the United States-led coalition did in its three-year campaign against the ISIL (ISIS) group.

Between 1942 and 1945, the Allies attacked 51 major German cities and towns, destroying about 40-50 percent of their urban areas, Pape told The Associated Press news agency.

“Gaza is one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history,” said Pape. “It now sits comfortably in the top quartile of the most devastating bombing campaigns ever.”

Corey Scher of the CUNY Graduate Center and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University told the AP, “Gaza is now a different colour from space. It’s a different texture.”

ALJAZEERA