Concerns about the permanent expulsion of Palestinians are heightened by Israel’s demolitions of Gaza City.

Shady Salama Al-Rayyes, a Palestinian bank employee, contributed to a $93,000 mortgage on his apartment in a large, contemporary building in a desirable area of Gaza City for ten years. After escaping an Israeli demolition strike that caused the structure to fall in a cloud of dust and black smoke, he and his family are now homeless.

An increased Israeli military demolition operation targeting high-rise structures began on September 5 with the attack on the 15-story Mushtaha Tower. This effort came ahead of a ground assault this week towards the center of the heavily populated city.

Israel’s military claims to have destroyed up to 20 tower complexes in Gaza City in the last two weeks, which they claim are used by Hamas. Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, said that fifty “terrorist towers” had been destroyed.

Hundreds of people are now homeless as a result of the campaign. Ten locals told Reuters that Israeli soldiers have leveled parts of the city’s Zeitoun, Tuffah, Shejaia, and Sheikh al-Radwan neighborhoods in a comparable period of time. The news agency studied satellite imagery showing the damage to numerous buildings in Sheikh al-Radwan since August.

Like the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR), Al-Rayyes expressed his concern that the destruction was intended to drive the people out of Gaza City permanently. According to a statement from its spokesperson, Thameen Al-Kheetan, such a concerted attempt to relocate the population would amount to ethnic cleansing.

“I never thought I would leave Gaza City, but the explosions are non-stop,” Al-Rayyes stated on Wednesday. “I can’t risk the safety of my children, so I am packing up and will leave for the south.”

But al-Rayyes promised he would never completely leave Gaza.

In May, Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, predicted that the majority of Gaza will soon be “totally destroyed” and its people reduced to a small area close to the Egyptian border.

A gate into northern Gaza was shut off last week by Israel, which has ordered all civilians in Gaza City to evacuate during the attack, significantly restricting the already limited supply of food.

Lieutenant-Colonel Nadav Shoshani, Israel’s military spokesperson, responded to questioning for this story by saying, “There’s no strategy to flatten Gaza.” He claimed that the military’s goals were to return the captives home and destroy Hamas.

He added that Hamas used citizens as human shields and set booby traps in structures, and that the Islamist militant group used tall buildings to watch and strike Israeli forces. In Gaza, IEDs frequently murder Israeli soldiers.

Hamas has denied attacking Israeli forces from residential towers.

According to two Israeli security sources who spoke to Reuters, the political and military objectives of Israel do not always coincide. One of them cited concepts like evicting Palestinians from parts of Gaza for future reconstruction as deviating from military objectives. A request for response was not immediately answered by Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office.

The offensive is the most recent stage of Israel’s war in Gaza, which has resulted in the deaths of over 65,000 Palestinians, the development of starvation, and the displacement of the majority of the population—often repeatedly—since Hamas-led attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 people and took 251 prisoners. Of the 48 hostages still in Gaza, about 20 are believed to be alive.

Israel committed genocide in Gaza, according to a UN investigation last week. Israel referred to the results as “scandalous” and unfair. According to UN experts, destroying infrastructure and homes for civilians may qualify as a war crime.

According to Israeli spokesperson Shoshani, an intelligence officer and a legal officer had authorized the structures as lawful military targets.

Following the evacuation order, “PANIC, FEAR”

Mushtaha Tower was well-liked by Gaza City’s professional class and students prior to the conflict because of its easy access to two colleges and a public park, as well as its views of the beach.

About 50 families lived there at first, but in recent months, as more people took in relatives who had been displaced from other parts of Gaza, that number has tripled, according to Al-Rayyes.

Around the base of the tower, scores of tents had been set up to house more displaced families. Prior hits had damaged the building’s upper floors.

On the morning of September 5, an Israeli army soldier called a neighbor and told him to warn others to leave the building immediately or they were “going to bring it down on our heads,” according to Al-Rayyes.

His description of the evacuation order could not be independently confirmed by Reuters. It is in line with reports from those who lived in other buildings before Israeli strikes. According to Shoshani, before striking the buildings, the military made sure all people had left and provided residents time to flee.

“We were all overcome by panic, terror, bewilderment, loss, despair, and suffering. People were sprinting on our bare feet, and some of them weren’t even carrying their phones or papers. Al-Rayyes, who had previously anticipated to pay off his mortgage by this year, stated, “I didn’t take passports or identity cards.”

“We carried nothing with us, my wife and my two children, Adam, 9, and Shahd, 11, climbed down the stairs and ran away.”

What followed is captured on Reuters video. Two projectiles detonated from the air into the tower’s base nearly simultaneously, destroying it in around six seconds. The streets and tents of the displaced people were covered in dust, smoke, and debris as they ran and screamed.

The Israeli military said that Hamas had “underground infrastructure” beneath Mushtaha Tower, which it utilized to strike Israeli forces in answer to a Reuters question. One request for evidence was turned down by the military.

The UN’s OHCHR told Reuters on Wednesday that the Israeli military had also failed to produce proof that other structures referred to as terrorist infrastructure were legitimate targets.

Even if there was a Hamas presence, which he denied, the demolition strategy “makes no sense,” according to Al-Rayyes, the head of the building’s tenants’ organization.

Using a different measurement of its height, he stated, “They could have dealt with it in a way that doesn’t even scratch people, not to destroy a 16-floor building.”

Al-Rayyes, who has been in the city since August along with hundreds of thousands of others, left after spending a few weeks with family in the Sabra sector. On Thursday, he was erecting a tent near Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza.

Homes in Gaza City’s outskirts are demolished by the military.

According to the people Reuters spoke with, up to a dozen homes have been burned every day in Zeitoun, Tuffah, and Shejaia in recent weeks in preparation for the ground attack.

According to Amjad Al-Shawa, the leader of the Palestinian Local NGOs Network, the battle had destroyed or seriously damaged more than 65% of Gaza City’s homes and buildings. Satellite photos of a number of neighborhoods show significant damage to suburban areas in recent weeks.

Since early August, Israel’s armed forces have carried out over 170 demolition incidents in Gaza City, mostly through controlled explosions in Zeitoun and Sabra as well as eastern areas, according to the Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), a non-profit organization that collects data on conflicts worldwide.

According to Ameneh Mehvar, Senior Middle East analyst at ACLED, “the pace and extent of demolitions appear more extensive than in previous periods,” she told Reuters. In contrast, she claimed that throughout the first 15 months of the conflict, there were less than 160 such demolitions documented in Gaza City.

According to the neighbors who talked to Reuters, Israeli forces destroyed numerous homes in the last two weeks by detonating remotely operated vehicles loaded with explosives in the neighborhoods of Sheikh Radwan and Tel Al-Hawa.

The deployment of ground-based explosives against buildings designated as military objectives was acknowledged by military spokesperson Shoshani. He stated that he was not explicitly aware of any trucks carrying explosives.

Some entire neighborhoods were demolished, according to the UN’s OHCHR, which said it had observed planned demolition of residential infrastructure.

According to the most recent statistics collected in July by the United Nations Satellite Centre, about 80% of Gaza’s buildings, or around 247,195 structures, had been damaged or destroyed since the conflict began, even before the current onslaught on Gaza City. Among them were 1,029 schools and 213 hospitals.

Tower blocks are among the few remaining shelter options, according to Bushra Khalidi, who oversees Oxfam’s policy on Gaza. She also cautioned that forcing people to leave would “exponentially” aggravate the overcrowding in the south.

Despite weeks of bombardment in the neighborhood, 23-year-old Tareq Abdel-Al, a finance student from Sabra, was reluctant to leave his home with his extended family because he was tired from being told to evacuate so frequently during the war, he claimed. Only after the houses next to their three-story house were demolished did they go early on August 19.

He said that the family’s home was demolished by an Israeli strike just twelve hours later.

Abdel-Al told Reuters over the phone from the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza, “Should we have stayed, we might have been killed that night,” describing the street’s considerable devastation.

“They destroyed our hope of returning,” he stated.