Israel’s U.S.-sponsored ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza has destroyed 70 percent of homes in the area in less than three months, according to a report released last week as the U.S. State Department announced that it is once again bypassing Congress to send more arms to Israel.
According to a Wall Street Journal report released on Saturday, by mid-December, Israel’s bombardment had destroyed roughly 300,000 of Gaza’s 439,000 homes and 50 percent of buildings in the region. Israel has used roughly 29,000 bombs in its bombardment, according to U.S. officials, which the analysis finds has destroyed a wide range of buildings, including residential areas and hospitals, as well as shopping malls, historic sites, and places of worship.
“The word ‘Gaza’ is going to go down in history along with Dresden and other famous cities that have been bombed,” University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape told the WSJ, referring to the Allied bombing of Dresden, Germany, that leveled nearly the entire city and killed tens of thousands of civilians. “What you’re seeing in Gaza is in the top 25 percent of the most intense punishment campaigns in history.”
An analysis of satellite imagery by City University of New York and Oregon State University found that, in northern Gaza, as many as 80 percent of buildings are destroyed, which is a higher proportion than the destruction in Dresden.
So far, Israel’s genocide has killed over 22,000 Palestinians, including more than 9,100 children. The genocide has also displaced roughly 85 percent of the region’s 2.2 million people. Rebuilding after the destruction — something that Israel is unlikely to allow, with officials seemingly set on total ethnic cleansing of the region — and finding homes for displaced will take “decades,” Kingston University London post-conflict expert Caroline Sandes told WSJ.
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