How the landmarks of everyday Gaza have disappeared under the rubble of war

Become an Independent member to bookmark this article Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Membership today. Join today Already a member? Log in This article first appeared on our partner site, Independent Arabia In Gaza, we never needed a map to find our way. We knew where we were by the landmarks of everyday life: an ancient tree, a neighbourhood bakery, a bank on a street corner, the distant view of a tower block that meant we had found the place we were looking for. Before 7 October 2023, Gaza was more than a narrow strip of land on the coast. It was made up of cities and refugee camps, markets that welcomed people every morning, farmland stretching along the edges of towns, factories and small workshops, universities and hospitals. Its built environment was diverse too, with high-rise and low-rise buildings, historic and religious sites, refugee camps that had evolved over decades, industrial facilities and agricultural land. Gaza was not without its crises. High population density, the blockade, shortages of services and unemployment were all part of life before the war . But the place was familiar to its residents: every neighbourhood had its landmarks, and every street had its own memory. open image in gallery Palestinian children walk amid the rubble of buildings destroyed during the war ( Reuters ) I knew I had reached Tal al-Hawa when I came to the bank at the beginning of the street. To me, the bank was more than a building; it was a landmark marking the entrance to the neighbourhood of Tal al-Hawa. It was a prominent building with a distinctive facade, and a large doorstep in front where we would sometimes sit. Beside it was a vegetable seller, and from there began the scene I had known for years. Rows of closely packed, uniform, adjoining towers, each around seven storeys high, alongside markets, restaurants, schools and mosques, and a street I often walked. From the bank’s doorstep, I could watch the life of the place unfold: the vegetable seller calling out his wares, people leaving the bank and walking along the street, cars moving constantly, with a garden in the background and the towers forming the familiar scene I knew. At the time, none of this seemed extraordinary. It was simply the life of the place. This is how we remember our cities: through what we see as we move through them, and through what we know will be there when we arrive. The erasure of landmarks and spaces open image in gallery Yarmouk Stadium in Gaza City pictured prior to the conflict, serving as one of the area’s oldest central sports and community hubs ( AFP/Getty ) open image in gallery The remains of Yarmouk Stadium, extensively damaged by bombardment, now serve as a makeshift refugee camp ( AFP/Getty ) When Israel allowed people to return to Tal al-Hawa, I went back to the place I loved. The first thing I saw, however, was not the neighbourhood I knew. In front of me was an entire row of towers whose shapes I had known for years, but which had now fallen. Six or seven towers, roughly, were no longer standing as they once had been. Part of one tower remained upright, blocking the view of what had once been behind it. I looked at the scene and said to myself: “This can’t possibly be Tal al-Hawa.” I was not looking only for my home. I was looking for the landmarks by which I had always recognised the place: the bank, the towers, the bakery, the street. But the scene I knew was no longer there in the same form. The street I remembered had been dug up and its route had changed; sand covered parts of it, the streetlights had disappeared, and the facade of the bank whose appearance I knew so well had been shattered. The building that had once been an unmistakable marker of the beginning of Tal al-Hawa no longer looked as it once did. Even the colour of the place had changed. The area I used to see from the bank’s doorstep, with its stone, facades and bustle, now appeared grey, barren and open to the void. I walked on, asking people: “Where am I? Where is the bakery?” I was asking about places I had once known without ever having to ask where they were. It was at that moment, precisely, that I understood that something greater than the buildings had changed. Three years of war had erased the landmarks that helped people in Gaza recognise where they were . Architectural researcher Yara Sharif told Independent Arabia : “After three years of war, it became clear that Gaza had lost more than its historic buildings. The destruction had also reached the cultural and social practices that took place within neighbourhoods, as well as the small details of everyday life. “The visual memory of the place had been overwhelmed by images of destruction, rubble and emptiness.” What happened in Tal al-Hawa was not something that affected me alone. In Zeitoun, one of Gaza City ’s oldest neighbourhoods, residents returned to a place they had known for decades only to find large parts of it altered beyond recognition. Ferial Ahmed spoke of the roof of her home collapsing on her family, and of how the features of her street had changed after most of the landmarks she remembered were destroyed. “The neighbourhood was known for its markets, its olive groves and the relationships that bound its families together,” she says. The scale of destruction Satellite images captured by the United Nations Satellite Centre offer another perspective on the scale of this transformation. The assessment estimated that around 83 per cent of the buildings in Gaza City had been damaged, and 81 per cent of buildings across the Gaza Strip . It also recorded damage to around 200,000 buildings, including around 123,000 classified as destroyed. The remaining damage was categorised as severe, moderate or possible. In Gaza City alone, 81,159 residential units were damaged. These figures cannot tell us what Zeitoun looks like in the memory of Ferial Ahmed, who lived in the neighbourhood for around 35 years, but they help to convey the scale of what she saw when she returned to the place she had called home since childhood. In Shuja'iyya, the transformation is visible from another perspective: not only in the appearance of the buildings , but in the number of people who remained after the landmarks of a neighbourhood that had once been one of the most densely populated areas of Gaza disappeared. According to a report published by the US broadcaster National Public Radio, fewer than 50 families remain in Shuja'iyya, which had been home to more than 100,000 people before the war. Saeed al-Hattab and his wife live in a ground-floor shop on the outskirts of Shuja'iyya, near the ‘yellow line’. “The family was displaced several times and had nowhere else to go, so we decided to stay here,” he says. “There are no longer any clinics, bakeries or shops in the area, and the nearest source of drinking water is about a 30-minute walk away. “Going out into the street carries a constant sense of fear.” The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) sought to measure the functionality of Gaza’s neighbourhoods across key areas such as housing, infrastructure and services as well as their impact on movement, public facilities and residents’ everyday lives. Its assessment concluded that more than 95 per cent of Gaza’s neighbourhoods fell within low, very low or extremely low levels of functionality, with around 77 per cent of Gaza’s road network damaged. Recommended October 7 attacks have led to an apocalyptic reality in Gaza – the violence must stop Netanyahu has no interest in an investigation into October 7 – he fears what it would find Satellite photos show how Israeli forces have erased Gaza towns A crisis of infrastructure In Gaza City’s al-Nasr neighbourhood, Haj Rebhi al-Feiri waited for more than four hours with his children for their turn to use a small electricity generator to switch on the water pump in their home. Each family gets only a few minutes of use. The pump is still in place, and the tank still sits above the house, but the system that once brought water into the home has changed. Access to water is no longer an ordinary function of the neighbourhood; it has become a service that requires a generator, fuel, waiting and a place in the queue. In Gaza, municipal spokesperson Hosni Muhanna estimates that the city needs around 100,000 cubic metres of water a day during the summer, while only about 30,000 cubic metres are available. Muhanna told Independent Arabia : “Eighty-five per cent of the city’s central wells have been damaged, along with more than 150,000 linear metres of water distribution networks.” The problem is not only the scale of the destruction, but also the ability of the services that remain to keep operating. After 19 water and sanitation facilities were repaired, they became technically operational, but continued to function at limited capacity because of a lack of electricity. Across the Gaza Strip, all six wastewater treatment plants remain out of service, while 70 per cent of sewage pumping stations are shut down. This means that more than 150,000 cubic metres of untreated wastewater continues to be discharged every day. This is where the problem of energy becomes apparent. Since the beginning of the war, the public electricity supply to the Gaza Strip has been cut off, leaving generators and limited energy sources to power parts of the water and sanitation systems, hospitals, communications and other services. After three years of war, the problem is no longer simply that electricity does not reach homes, but that the capacity of the services that depend on it to function has also steadily declined. Hospitals and schools Gaza's Al-Shifa hospital flattened after end of Israel's latest siege At Nasser Hospital, Ahmed al-Nabarees, an internal medicine specialist, expressed his concern: “Power cuts and shortages of engine oil for the generators threaten the operation of essential equipment, particularly ventilators and inhalation devices.” The hospital may still be standing, the doctors, patients and beds may still be there, but the place no longer performs the same function it once did. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), only 19 of the 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip were partially functioning, while none were operating at full capacity. A study based on WHO data found that the functionality of Gaza’s hospital system had fallen to 13.9 per cent, revealing the scale of the healthcare system’s collapse. Education has resumed too, but not in the schools students attended before the war. According to Unicef , around 98 per cent of school buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed , while 86 per cent of the kindergartens assessed were damaged, destroyed or rendered inaccessible. Around 495,000 children were enrolled in learning spaces supported by the UN and its partners, while around 200,000 children remained outside any form of organised education . Teacher Raja al-Nabahain told Independent Arabia : “Before the war, schools had desks, books and stationery. Now, even these basic necessities are unavailable in many places.” Shops without customers, neighbourhoods without homes In the markets, the picture appears different at first glance. Some shops have reopened their doors, lorries are entering the Gaza Strip, and goods that had been in short supply for long periods are once again available. While goods are back on the shelves, the market itself has yet to return to pre-crisis levels. Maher al-Khudari, a shopkeeper in Gaza City, said: “The pattern of purchasing has changed. Some customers are now asking to buy what they need on credit.” According to the Palestinian Ministry of Social Development, many families are unable to afford basic goods . The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates