Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza for nearly three months has destroyed 70 percent of the homes in the besieged Palestinian enclave, according to the Government Media Office.
No further details were provided but an earlier report said more than 200 heritage and archaeological sites were destroyed in the Israeli bombardment considered the most destructive in modern history.
About 300,000 out of 439,000 homes have been destroyed in Israeli attacks, a Wall Street Journal report said. Analysing satellite imagery, the report added that the 29,000 bombs dropped on the strip have targeted residential areas, Byzantine churches, hospitals and shopping malls and all civilian infrastructure has been damaged to an extent that they cannot be repaired.
“The word ‘Gaza’ is going to go down in history along with Dresden [Germany] and other famous cities that have been bombed,” Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago who has written about the history of aerial bombing, told WSJ.
I don’t know, but we can do some back-of-the-envelope math. Start with 2 million people total, averaging maybe 10 people per building, gives 200,000 residential buildings. Some of these are 100+ person highrises, but others are single family homes. If each bomb, on average, destroys a building, we get 25-30k destroyed using recent bomb estimates. Obviously some bombs destroy more, but others hit already destroyed buildings.
If we then take the 70% number as gospel, that is 140k buildings “damaged or destroyed”, so that would give us something like 30k destroyed, 110k damaged. This ratio is why the article in question is being disingenuous.
Of those 110k, you ask how many just have broken windows. As I said I don’t know, but just based on what I have seen, bombs can break windows a quarter mile away, especially when the overpressure is channelled down a city street. This is much farther than you’d see actual structural damage. If I had to guess, most of these damaged buildings will fall in the “broken windows” category.
The problem there is 2,000 pound bombs are being used regularly. They will destroy multiple buildings easily, especially in built up areas.
Agreed, dropping a bomb that large in an urban environment is frankly insane. My understanding is that only 2% of bombs dropped are 2000 pounders, and presumably they are mostly used against large, hardened targets, so we should keep in mind that they are at least a rarity. That being said they probably account for an outsized number of destroyed buildings and civilian deaths.
Israel said they were using them on tunnel entrances.
They then said they considered any hatch on the ground that they can see with a drone to be tunnel entrances.
I do not think they were as rare as you think.
A quick Google search seems to indicate 500-600 were dropped. This is inline with 2% of the 25-30k total bombs. It also lends credence to the idea that these were mostly dropped on already destroyed buildings, since only then would “tunnels” be visible.
Except respectable news organizations like CNN and NYT specifically report their use in still populated areas, including areas people were told to evacuate to.
Furthermore in terms of destroying housing, a 500 pound bombs might wreck a house. A 2,000 pound bomb will bring down an apartment building.
And finally, many maintenance hatches in urban infrastructure are on the exterior of buildings and right on sidewalks for easy access. We’re not talking about root cellars exposed by previous bombing.
Edit - Also, I’d love to see a link to your source on the number of bombs.
Not contesting any of that, although personally I doubt they aimed a 2000 pound bomb at every visible manhole cover. Source, which was the first result for “how many 2000 pound bombs has Israel dropped on Gaza”, is here. Could be an undercount of course.
Interesting the NYT did the same thing and said there was a very good chance they couldn’t find them all and there could be hundreds more.
But I also find it interesting that you doubt they dropped one on every suspected tunnel entrance when they had no problem putting schools inside the kill radius of these bombs. If they aren’t willing to stop at bombing kids, what are they willing to stop at?
Oh I just meant logistically. There must be thousands of manhole covers and only so many planes. Also at no point in this thread did I defend any of Israel’s actions just so we’re clear.