Residents of Gaza Bid Farewell to Their Destroyed Homes... Fears of Permanent Displacement

SadaNews - For a decade, Palestinian Shadi Salameh Al-Rais, an employee at a bank, has been repaying a $93,000 mortgage for his apartment in a modern, towering building in a upscale neighborhood of Gaza City.

Now, he and his family live in abject poverty after fleeing from an Israeli strike that demolished the building in the blink of an eye, turning it into a pile of rubble amid a cloud of smoke and dust.

The attack on the 16-story Mishta Tower on September 5 marks the beginning of an intensive demolition campaign carried out by the Israeli army, targeting high-rise buildings ahead of the ground assault on the heart of the densely populated city, which began last week.

Over the past two weeks, the Israeli military has announced that it has demolished up to 20 residential towers in Gaza City, claiming that the "Hamas" organization uses them. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that 50 "terrorist towers" have been destroyed.

This campaign has displaced hundreds. During the same timeframe, Israeli forces flattened areas in the neighborhoods of Zaitoun, Al-Tuffah, Al-Shuja'iyya, Sheikh Radwan, and others, according to 10 residents who spoke to Reuters. Satellite images reviewed by Reuters show the destruction of dozens of buildings in Sheikh Radwan since August.

Al-Rais fears that the destruction is aimed at permanently displacing the residents of Gaza City, a view shared by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. The commission’s spokesperson, Thamin Al-Khitan, stated in a statement that such a deliberate campaign to displace populations amounts to ethnic cleansing.

Last Wednesday, Al-Rais said, "I never imagined I would leave Gaza City, but the explosions do not stop... I cannot risk my children’s lives, so I am packing my things and will head south." He pledged to remain in the territory, saying, "If I were given the choice of any country in the world, I would not choose anywhere but Gaza."

In May, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich vowed that most of the Gaza Strip would be "completely destroyed" soon, with its inhabitants piled into a narrow strip of land near the border with Egypt.

Israel has warned all civilians in Gaza City, urging them to evacuate during the attack. Last week, it closed a crossing into northern Gaza, limiting the scant food supplies to the area.

In response to questions for this story, Israeli military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani stated, "There is no strategy to destroy Gaza." He added that the army’s goal is to destroy "Hamas" and rescue hostages. He asserted that "Hamas" used the high-rise buildings to observe and attack Israeli forces, adding that the organization employed civilians as human shields and planted explosives in buildings. Israeli soldiers are often killed by explosives in Gaza. "Hamas" denied the use of residential towers to attack Israeli forces.

Two Israeli security sources told Reuters that the goals of the army and Israeli politicians do not always align, with one indicating that ideas such as evacuating areas in Gaza from Palestinians for future reconstruction conflict with military objectives. This attack represents the latest phase in Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed over 65,000 Palestinians, caused famine, and displaced most of the population, forcing them to flee multiple times in many cases.

The latest war in the enclave erupted after a Hamas attack on towns in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, leading to the death of 1,200 people and the capture of 251 hostages, according to Israeli statistics. Still, 48 of the hostages remain in Gaza, and about 20 of them are believed to be alive.

Last week, a UN investigation concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Israel described this conclusion as biased and "shameful." UN experts say that the destruction of homes and civilian infrastructure constitutes a war crime.

Israeli military spokesman Shoshani stated that the buildings were legitimate military targets approved by an intelligence officer and a legal officer.

"Terror and Fear" After Evacuation Order

Before the war, the Mishta Tower was popular among professionals and students in Gaza City for its sea view and its convenient location near a public park and two universities.

Al-Rais noted that the tower initially sheltered about 50 families, but that number tripled in recent months as residents welcomed relatives displaced from other parts of Gaza.

Dozens of tents sheltering more displaced families have spread around the base of the tower. The upper floors of the building were previously damaged due to previous airstrikes.

Al-Rais stated that on the morning of September 5, one of the neighbors received a call from an Israeli army officer asking him to disseminate the order to evacuate the building within minutes, or else "they would bring the tower down on our heads." Shoshani said the army allowed residents time to evacuate, ensuring that civilians left before bombing the buildings.

Al-Rais, who hoped to repay his mortgage by this year, said: "Feelings of terror, fear, loss, despair, confusion, and pain overtook all of us. I saw people running barefoot, some forgetting their phones and documents, I didn’t take passports or ID cards." He added that they carried nothing with them, and that his wife and two children, Adam (9 years) and Shahd (11 years), ran down the stairs and fled.

Video footage recorded by Reuters shows what happened next. Two shells fell from the sky and exploded almost simultaneously at the base of the tower, causing it to collapse in about six seconds. Dust and smoke billowed into the streets and over the tents of displaced persons, who scattered as they ran and screamed.

In response to a question from Reuters, the Israeli army stated that "Hamas" had an "underground infrastructure" below the Mishta Tower, which it used to attack Israeli forces.

In reply to Reuters on Wednesday, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights stated that the Israeli army has not provided evidence to prove that other structures it described as terrorist infrastructure were legitimate military targets.

Al-Rais, who was the head of the building’s residents' association, said the demolition method is illogical, even if "Hamas" was present, which he denied. He added, "They could have dealt with the issue in a way that didn’t harm or scratch anyone, instead of destroying a 16-story tower."

After spending two weeks with his family in Al-Sabra neighborhood, Al-Rais left, like hundreds of thousands of residents of the city who have fled since August, and set up a tent in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza on Thursday.

The Israeli army demolishes homes in the suburbs of Gaza City

Residents who spoke to Reuters reported that in preparation for the ground attack, the army destroyed up to 12 homes daily in the neighborhoods of Zaitoun, Al-Tuffah, and Al-Shuja'iyya during the past few weeks.

Amjad Al-Shawwa, head of the Palestinian NGO Network in Gaza, estimated that more than 65 percent of buildings and homes in Gaza City have been destroyed or severely damaged during the war. Satellite images of several neighborhoods show significant damage to the city’s suburbs in recent weeks.

The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit organization that collects data on conflicts worldwide, documented over 170 demolition incidents carried out by the Israeli army in Gaza City since early August, most of which were through controlled explosions in the eastern areas, in addition to Zaitoun and Al-Sabra neighborhoods.

In a related context, Amal Mahfar, senior Middle East analyst at ACLED, stated: "The pace and extent of demolition operations seem broader than in previous periods." She noted that, in comparison, fewer than 160 such demolitions have been recorded in Gaza City during the first 15 months of the war.

Residents who spoke to Reuters also reported that Israeli forces detonated remote-controlled explosive-laden vehicles in the Sheikh Radwan and Tal Al-Hawa neighborhoods, destroying several houses in the past two weeks.

Shoshani, the Israeli army spokesman, confirmed the use of ground explosives against buildings classified as military targets. He stated that he had no information about vehicles loaded with explosives specifically.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that it has documented controlled demolitions of residential infrastructure and stated that some neighborhoods have been entirely destroyed.

According to the latest data released by the UN Satellite Center, even before the current attack on Gaza City, nearly 80 percent of buildings in Gaza had been damaged or destroyed, which accounts for about 247,195 buildings since the start of the war. This included 213 hospitals and 1,029 schools. The data was collected in July.

Bushra Khalidi, Gaza policy officer at Oxfam, stated that residential towers are one of the last forms of refuge available and warned that forcing people to flee will exacerbate overcrowding in the south "steadily".

Tariq Abdul Aal (23), a finance student from Al-Sabra neighborhood, hesitated to leave his home with his family despite the area being bombarded for weeks, saying he was exhausted from repeated evacuation orders during the war. However, they only left on the morning of August 19 after homes adjacent to their three-story house were demolished, saying that just 12 hours later an Israeli airstrike destroyed their family home.

Abdul Aal told Reuters by phone from Al-Nuseirat camp in central Gaza, describing the severe damage to the entire street: "If we had stayed that night in the house, we would have been killed... they destroyed our hope of returning."