Residents who returned to the northern Gaza town of Jabaliya on Friday had expected to see widespread destruction, but said they were still dismayed by the extent of ruin they saw after Israel launched a three-week offensive against densely populated urban areas. Shocked.
“The devastation is indescribable,” said Mohammed Awais, who returned to his home in Jabaliya with his family on Friday. “Our brains can’t make sense of what we’re seeing.”
He said he and his family walked for nearly an hour in hot weather along devastated roads, finding no vehicles allowed to drive on streets clogged with rubble from homes and shops destroyed by Israeli forces.
Along the way, rescue workers passed by, carrying the injured and the bodies of the dead on stretchers. Aais, a social media marketer, said some bodies were found on the street, while others were dug up and pulled out of rubble and had begun to decompose.
“Even ambulances cannot drive through them to transport the wounded and martyrs,” he said of Jabaliya’s streets.
The Israeli military said on Friday it had completed its offensive into eastern Jabaliya and withdrew after recovering the bodies of seven hostages, killing hundreds of militants and destroying a miles-long network of underground tunnels.
Satellite images taken by Planet Labs in late May show the scale of damage in the southern part of the town and near the market.
Images from April showed some buildings had been destroyed ahead of Israel’s latest assault on the area. But by late May, more buildings in these areas appeared to have been leveled, along with nearly all vegetation.
Mr. Avis and his family are among the few residents who still have a place to return. Their home was only partially damaged. On Friday, they began clearing away partially collapsed walls, broken wood and glass and destroyed furniture to make their home habitable again. But he said the family supermarket, which had to close in December due to the Israeli siege of Gaza, was now completely destroyed.
“Rubble is everywhere,” he added.
On May 11, the Israeli military said it had renewed its offensive in Jabaliya as Hamas, the Palestinian armed group that led the October 7 attack, attempts to rebuild its infrastructure and operations in the area. At the time, Hamas accused Israel of “escalating its aggression against civilians across Gaza” and vowed to keep fighting.
Israel’s first incursion into northern Gaza follows weeks of heavy aerial attacks on the northern Gaza enclave following the Oct. 7 attack. The military launched several deadly attacks on Jabaliya. Many in Jabaliya survived attacks in the early months of the war believing they would be protected from another Israeli attack.
“Residents returned in tears,” Gaza journalist Hossam Shibat said. “All we saw was rubble, destruction and wreckage. There was more carnage.
He added, “Residents came back to see things no one could have imagined: the destruction of businesses and infrastructure, as well as the shelters that provided shelter to thousands of displaced people.”
Jabaliya is often called a refugee camp because it was established more than 70 years ago by Palestinian refugees who were expelled or forced to flee their homes during the establishment of the state of Israel. They were never allowed to return home, and Jabaliya grew into a community populated by refugees and their descendants.
In a video recorded by Schbart on Thursday, he showed the ruins of Jabaliya around him. Behind him, fire still raged in the ruins of the shell of a four-story building.
“We have no words to describe it,” he said in an interview. “The occupying forces deliberately destroyed all the necessities of life.”
