An unprecedented Israeli bombardment destroys the Rimal extension, the beating heart of Gaza City

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) – Collapsed buildings, destroyed infrastructure, streets turned into fields of rubble.

Scenes of violence and destruction in the long-blockade Gaza Strip have filled the world’s airwaves throughout four wars and countless rounds of hostilities between Israel and Hamas militants. But this conflictPalestinians say, it’s different.

On Tuesday, following night of intense bombardmentresidents struggled to comprehend the scale of the damage inflicted on Gaza City’s exclusive Rimal neighborhood, with its shopping malls, restaurants, residential buildings and offices belonging to aid groups and international media far from border towns and the impoverished refugee camps in the territory. .

Israel has hit Rimal, also home to Hamas government ministries, in the 2021 war, but never like this.

Israeli bombs blew up walls and tore roofs off high-class apartment towers. They brought down the trees that had lined the sidewalks. They tore up streets full of businessmen going to work and vendors selling roasted nuts. They razed mosques and university buildings and smashed high-rise offices of companies and organizations such as Gaza’s main telecommunications company and the Bar Association.

Between these wide boulevards full of beauty salons, falafel shops and pizzerias beats the heart of Gaza City. For many, the magnitude of the devastation that occurred there, affecting the middle and upper classes of the territory, had a symbolic meaning.

“Israel has destroyed the center of everything,” Palestinian businessman Ali al-Hiyak said from his home near Rimal. “This is the space of our public life, our community.”

“They are tearing us apart,” he added.

After Hamas rulers in Gaza staged the deadliest attack on Israel in decades, killing more than 1,000 people and taking dozens of hostages in a multi-pronged offensive, Israel unleashed what Gaza residents described as the most intense bombing campaign in the recent memory, with hundreds of airstrikes on Monday night.

“These sounds are different,” Saman Ashour, 30, texted in Gaza City as he lay awake in a neighborhood north of Rimal, listening to the roar of explosions. “It’s the sound of revenge.”

Residents said the Israeli army hit some buildings without first firing warning missiles as a precaution. The civilian death toll has risen rapidly. Overall, health officials in Gaza have reported that the airstrikes have killed more than 800 people and injured thousands more. Israel has also cut off water and electricity supplies to Gaza, worsening the already abysmal humanitarian conditions in the territory.

The Israeli military’s Arab spokesman, Avichay Adraee, said Israel was trying to “evacuate civilian populations from areas where Hamas has a military presence” before unleashing “powerful destruction.”

This tactic is evident from the stunning drone footage showing large swaths of central Gaza City reduced to nothing but craters of earth and the ruins of demolished buildings.

But most Palestinian civilians did not evacuate. There are no bomb shelters. Israel and Egypt tightly control the enclave’s borders and have not let anyone out. UN shelters are filling up fast.

After the militant group’s unprecedented attack on Israeli civilians and soldiers, which shocked and terrified a country long seen as invincible, analysts said it was clear the group had put all its chips on the line regardless. the consequences Israel was now waging a war not to repel Hamas, as in previous rounds, but to destroy it.

“The strategic perspective is to annihilate, destroy and demolish the military capability of Hamas,” said Kobi Michael, a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies, an Israeli think tank. “Hamas brought this to the heads of the people of Gaza.”

“If Israel is not aggressive enough,” he added, “this will only drag us to another front and another conflict.”

But Palestinians in Gaza see the Israeli army’s wrath as collective punishment.

“We are talking about damage to hospitals that can’t even function without fuel, the total demolition of homes and infrastructure,” said Iyad Bozum, spokesman for Gaza’s Interior Ministry. “At the end of this, there will be nothing to rebuild. It will be impossible to live here.”

Rimal strikes early Tuesday killed ordinary residents such as local shopkeepers and journalists and destroyed dozens of houses.

Issa Abu Salim, 60, was seething amid the rubble of his home, his clothes dirty from the dust of the destruction.

“Our money is gone. My identity cards are gone. The whole house is gone, all four floors,” he said. “The most beautiful area, they destroyed it.”