One year after October 7 Hamas attack, Gaza bombed, blockaded and bulldozed

Following the attack of the Hamas group on October 7, 2023, Israel bombed, blockaded and bulldozed the Gaza Strip.

Early in the morning of October 7, 2023, Hamas militants attacked border villages in the southern part of the Jewish State while simultaneously launching a massive rocket attack on other areas. The attack that Israel saw on October 7, 2023, was the bloodiest in history. About 1,200 people were killed and another 251 were taken hostage in the first day of the attack.

The same day, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched retaliatory strikes on Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip. On October 8, the Israeli government officially declared martial law and mobilised reservists.

On October 9, Defense Minister Yoav Galant announced the blockade of the Palestinian exclave, which meant cutting off electricity, fuel, and cargo supplies.

"We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,” he said.

By mid-November 2023, the US pushed Israel to soften its stance and allow limited fuel supplies, but power outages in the Gaza Strip continue to this day.

The IDF's bombing and ground operation on October 27 led to the displacement of civilians to the southern Gaza Strip, primarily to the town of Rafah near the border with Egypt. At its peak, there were about 1.4 million people there, including about 1 million refugees from other parts of the Palestinian exclave.

On the night of May 7, 2024, Israel kicked off a ground operation in Rafah and established control over the checkpoint of the same name, as well as on the Gaza-Egypt border — the Philadelphia Corridor. The hostilities forced refugees in Rafah to flee to other parts of the Gaza Strip.

Over the course of the year, the parties could agree on a ceasefire only once — from November 24 to December 1, 2023. Israel exchanged dozens of Palestinian prisoners for 105 hostages held by Hamas. Since the beginning of 2024, international mediators have tried to persuade the parties to agree on another truce for a period of six weeks, during which Israel and Hamas could agree on a peaceful settlement of the conflict, albeit to no avail.

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, about 42,000 residents of the Gaza Strip were killed and more than 96,000 were injured as a result of the hostilities. Thousands of others went missing. Most likely, they were trapped under the rubble of buildings during bombings. Almost all Gazans were forced to abandon their homes to survive. Many people had to do it multiple times, the UN said.

"Children have missed out on an entire year of education. Schools sheltering displaced families have been repeatedly shelled, health-care workers and hospitals have been systematically attacked, and aid convoys have been continually blocked and even shot at," the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement marking the anniversary of the start of the war.

The fighting and damage to civilian infrastructure have led to an outbreak of intestinal and other infectious diseases among the civilian population of the Gaza Strip. In late August, Israel agreed to humanitarian pauses in the fighting to allow the World Health Organization (WHO) to vaccinate Palestinian children after cases of polio were reported for the first time in 25 years.

As many as 2,15 million of the 2.25-million-strong Gaza faced the threat of starvation. About 1.24 million people already suffer from undernourishment. Not less than 200,000 buildings have been destroyed in the bombings, either partially or completely.