GAZA CITY: For a decade, Palestinian bank worker Shady Salama Al-Rayyes paid into a $93,000 mortgage on his flat in a tall, modern block in one of Gaza City’s prime neighborhoods. Now, he and his family are destitute, after fleeing an Israeli demolition strike that collapsed the building in a cloud of black smoke and dust.
The Sept. 5 attack on the 15-story Mushtaha Tower marked the start of an intensified Israeli military demolition campaign targeting high-rise buildings ahead of a ground assault toward the heart of the densely populated city, which started this week.
Over the past two weeks, Israel’s armed forces say they have demolished up to 20 Gaza City tower blocks they say are used by Hamas.
The campaign has made hundreds of people homeless.
In a similar time frame, Israeli forces have flattened areas in the city’s Zeitoun, Tuffah, Shejaia, and Sheikh Al-Radwan neighborhoods, among others, 10 residents said.
The damage to scores of buildings in Sheikh Al-Radwan since August is visible in satellite imagery reviewed by the news agency.
Al-Rayyes said he feared the destruction was aimed at permanently clearing the population from Gaza City, a view shared by the UN Human Rights Office, or OHCHR.
Its spokesperson, Thameen Al-Kheetan, said in a statement that such a deliberate effort to relocate the population would be tantamount to ethnic cleansing.
“I never thought I would leave Gaza City, but the explosions are non-stop,” Al-Rayyes said.
“I can’t risk the safety of my children, so I am packing up and will leave for the south.”
Al-Rayyes vowed, however, never to leave Gaza entirely.
Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said in May that most of Gaza would soon be “totally destroyed” and the population confined to a narrow strip of land near the border with Egypt.
Israel, which has called for all of Gaza City’s civilian residents to leave during the offensive, last week closed a crossing into northern Gaza, further limiting scarce food supplies.
In response to questions for this story, Israel’s military spokesperson Lt-Col. Nadav Shoshani said “there’s no strategy to flatten Gaza.”
The goals of Israel’s military and its politicians are not always aligned, two Israeli security sources said, with one citing ideas such as clearing Palestinians from areas of Gaza for future redevelopment as diverging from military goals.
The offensive is the latest phase in Israel’s war in Gaza.
Before the war, Mushtaha Tower was popular with Gaza City’s professional class and students drawn to its ocean views and convenient location near a public park and two universities.
It originally housed about 50 families, but that number had tripled in recent months as people took in relatives displaced from other parts of Gaza, said Al-Rayyes.
Scores of tents housing more displaced families had spread around the tower’s base. Previous strikes had damaged the upper floors of the building.
On the morning of Sept. 5, a neighbor got a call from an Israeli army officer instructing him to spread the word to evacuate the building within minutes or they were “going to bring it down on our heads,” Al-Rayyes said.
“Panic, fear, confusion, loss, despair, and pain overwhelmed all of us. I saw people running on our bare feet; some didn’t even take their mobile phones or documents. I didn’t take passports or identity cards,” said Al-Rayyes, who had once hoped to pay off his mortgage by this year.
“We carried nothing with us, my wife and my two children, Adam, 9, and Shahd, 11, climbed down the stairs and ran away.”
Video filmed by Reuters shows what happened next. From the air, two projectiles exploded almost simultaneously into the base of the tower, demolishing it in around six seconds.
Dust, smoke, and debris billowed over the streets and tents of displaced people, who scattered, running and screaming.
The UN’s OHCHR said the Israeli military had also not provided evidence to demonstrate that other buildings described as terrorist infrastructure were valid military targets.
Al-Rayyes, who headed the building’s residents’ association, said the tactic of demolition “makes no sense,” even if there was a Hamas presence, which he denied.
“They could have dealt with it in a way that doesn’t even scratch people, not to destroy a 16-floor building,” he said, using a different count of its height.
After a couple of weeks with family in the city’s Sabra district, Al-Rayyes has left, and was setting up a tent in central Gaza’s Deir Al-Balah on Thursday.
In preparation for the ground assault, in recent weeks, up to a dozen homes have been destroyed daily in Zeitoun, Tuffah, and Shejaia, the residents said.
Amjad Al-Shawa, head of the Palestinian Local NGOs Network, estimated that over 65 percent of buildings and homes in Gaza City had been destroyed or heavily damaged during the war.
Extensive damage to suburban areas in recent weeks is visible in satellite images of several neighborhoods.
