Israel Destroyed Gaza’s Roads and Transit. Now, We Walk Everywhere.

Israel’s military assault and prolonged siege have dismantled Gaza’s transportation system, turning ordinary movement into arduous, risky labor.

“In Gaza, movement is no longer a mundane part of daily life”

The Intercept

By late 2025, Gaza’s Ministry of Transport and Communications reported that approximately 70 percent of registered vehicles—more than 50,000 cars, taxis, buses, and trucks—had been destroyed or rendered inviable.

The Intercept

The ministry also reported that between 68 and 85 percent of the road network suffered damage or total destruction, with some areas such as Khan Younis losing more than 90 percent of their routes.

The article says Israeli forces repeatedly bombed, cratered, and bulldozed major roads and intersections, severing connections between neighborhoods and governorates and obstructing ambulances and humanitarian convoys.

The Gaza government estimates losses exceed $3 billion, including damage to more than three million linear meters of roads.

The blockade, which restricts fuel, spare parts, tires, batteries, and heavy machinery, has further undermined Gaza’s ability to repair or recover.

The collapse of transport has immediate, severe human consequences: streets are littered with rubble, burst water and sewage lines flood routes and create biohazards, and even technically passable roads are obstructed by rubble and collapsed infrastructure beneath the surface.

Residents rely on unsafe alternatives — tuk-tuks with no safety standards, animal-drawn carts, overcrowded cargo trucks, or walking long distances across shattered streets — and municipal teams cannot clear wreckage because of fuel shortages and lack of functioning equipment.

The Intercept

The author provides a first-person account of traveling with his brother Mohammed four times to reach a dentist in the Al-Maghazi refugee camp nearly 10 kilometers away, describing rain that turned broken roads to mud and how the road drained him more than the dental procedure itself.

The piece stresses that access to health care now depends on physical endurance: patients miss appointments, parents carry children for kilometers, and elderly and disabled people remain trapped or forgo care.

Economic and social systems have also been devastated: tens of thousands of drivers lost livelihoods as taxis, buses, and trucks were destroyed or immobilized, commercial transport slowed, supply chains were disrupted, and the cost of basic goods and transportation spiked.

“In Gaza, movement is no longer a mundane part of daily life”

The Intercept

The article links recent price surges to panic-buying of essentials and fuel after, it says, the U.S. and Israel began their joint assault on Iran, Lebanon, and the broader region.

It notes a 48-hour closure of border crossings that worsened shortages, and says prices have started to gradually decrease but the overall burden remains heavy.

Informal transport operators set exploitative fares while local authorities, under siege conditions, have limited options to protect residents.

Emergency rehabilitation plans prioritize reopening routes to hospitals, shelters, and aid distribution centers, but even minimal recovery remains largely theoretical without fuel, spare parts, and heavy machinery and is constrained by political decisions beyond Gaza’s control.

The article concludes that mobility itself has become a casualty of war, contracting life in Gaza and determining who can reach care, work, or safety.