Palestinians Confront a Landscape of Israeli Destruction in Gaza’s ‘Ghost Towns’ 

Palestinians walk past the rubble of houses and buildings destroyed during the war, following a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, January 21, 2025. (Reuters)
Palestinians walk past the rubble of houses and buildings destroyed during the war, following a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, January 21, 2025. (Reuters)
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Palestinians Confront a Landscape of Israeli Destruction in Gaza’s ‘Ghost Towns’ 

Palestinians walk past the rubble of houses and buildings destroyed during the war, following a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, January 21, 2025. (Reuters)
Palestinians walk past the rubble of houses and buildings destroyed during the war, following a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, January 21, 2025. (Reuters)

Palestinians in Gaza are confronting an apocalyptic landscape of devastation after a ceasefire paused more than 15 months of fighting between Israel and Hamas.

Across the tiny coastal enclave, where built-up refugee camps are interspersed between cities, drone footage captured by The Associated Press shows mounds of rubble stretching as far as the eye can see — remnants of the longest and deadliest war between Israel and Hamas in their blood-ridden history.

"As you can see, it became a ghost town," said Hussein Barakat, 38, whose home in the southern city of Rafah was flattened. "There is nothing," he said, as he sat drinking coffee on a brown armchair perched on the rubble of his three-story home, in a surreal scene.

Critics say Israel has waged a campaign of scorched earth to destroy the fabric of life in Gaza, accusations that are being considered in two global courts, including the crime of genocide. Israel denies those charges and says its military has been fighting a complex battle in dense urban areas and that it tries to avoid causing undue harm to civilians and their infrastructure.

Military experts say the reality is complicated.

"For a campaign of this duration, which is a year’s worth of fighting in a heavily urban environment where you have an adversary that is hiding in amongst that environment, then you would expect an extremely high level of damage," said Matthew Savill, director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, a British think-tank.

Savill said that it was difficult to draw a broad conclusion about the nature of Israel's campaign. To do so, he said, would require each strike and operation to be assessed to determine whether they adhered to the laws of armed conflict and whether all were proportional, but he did not think the scorched earth description was accurate.

International rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, view the vast destruction as part of a broader pattern of extermination and genocide directed at Palestinians in Gaza, a charge Israel denies. The groups dispute Israel's stance that the destruction was a result of military activity.

Human Rights Watch, in a November report accusing Israel of crimes against humanity, said "the destruction is so substantial that it indicates the intention to permanently displace many people."

From a fierce air campaign during the first weeks of the war, to a ground invasion that sent thousands of troops in on tanks, the Israeli response to a Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, has ground down much of the civilian infrastructure of the Gaza Strip, displacing 90% of its population. The brilliant color of pre-war life has faded into a monotone cement gray that dominates the territory. It could take decades, if not more, to rebuild.

Airstrikes throughout the war toppled buildings and other structures said to be housing fighters. But the destruction intensified with the ground forces, who fought Hamas fighters in close combat in dense areas.

If fighters were seen firing from an apartment building near a troop maneuver, forces might take the entire building down to thwart the threat. Tank tracks chewed up paved roads, leaving dusty stretches of earth in their wake.

The military’s engineering corps was tasked with using bulldozers to clear routes, downing buildings seen as threats, and blowing up Hamas’ underground tunnel network.

Experts say the operations to neutralize tunnels were extremely destructive to surface infrastructure. For example, if a 1.5-kilometer (1-mile) long tunnel was blown up by Israeli forces, it would not spare homes or buildings above, said Michael Milshtein, a former Israeli army intelligence officer.

"If (the tunnel) passes under an urban area, it all gets destroyed," he said. "There’s no other way to destroy a tunnel."

Cemeteries, schools, hospitals and more were targeted and destroyed, he said, because Hamas was using these for military purposes. Secondary blasts from Hamas explosives inside these buildings could worsen the damage.

The way Israel has repeatedly returned to areas it said were under its control, only to have fighters overrun it again, has exacerbated the destruction, Savill said.

That’s evident especially in northern Gaza, where Israel launched a new campaign in early October that almost obliterated Jabaliya, a built up, urban refugee camp. Jabaliya is home to the descendants of Palestinians who fled, or were forced to flee, during the war that led to Israel‘s creation in 1948. Milshtein said Israel's dismantling of the tunnel network is also to blame for the destruction there.

But the destruction was not only caused from strikes on targets. Israel also carved out a buffer zone about a kilometer inside Gaza from its border with Israel, as well as within the Netzarim corridor that bisects north Gaza from the south, and along the Philadelphi Corridor, a stretch of land along Gaza’s border with Egypt. Vast swaths in these areas were leveled.

Amir Avivi, a retired Israeli general, said the buffer zones were an operational necessity meant to carve out secure plots of land for Israeli forces. He denied Israel had cleared civilian areas indiscriminately.

The destruction, like the civilian death toll in Gaza, has raised accusations that Israel committed war crimes, which it denies. The decisions the military made in choosing what to topple, and why, are an important factor in that debate.

"The second fighters move into a building and start using it to fire on you, you start making a calculation about whether or not you can strike," Savill said. Downing the building, he said, "it still needs to be necessary."



Iran Loosens Import Restrictions on Foreign Cars, iPhones to Mask its Economic Woes

Visitors gather around a car on display at the 6th International Tehran Auto Show and related industries, just outside Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Visitors gather around a car on display at the 6th International Tehran Auto Show and related industries, just outside Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
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Iran Loosens Import Restrictions on Foreign Cars, iPhones to Mask its Economic Woes

Visitors gather around a car on display at the 6th International Tehran Auto Show and related industries, just outside Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Visitors gather around a car on display at the 6th International Tehran Auto Show and related industries, just outside Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

All architecture student Amirhossein Azizi wanted for his 19th birthday was the latest iPhone — and for Iran's cash-strapped theocracy, it was just the gift they needed as well.

Just buying a top-of-the-line iPhone 16 Pro Max in Iran's capital cost him on the day 1.6 billion rials ($1,880). An additional 450 million rials ($530) is required for import fees and registration on government-managed mobile phone networks.

“I’m very happy to own one of the most expensive phones in the country," Azizi said. His father, Mohammad, laughed nearby and added: “Maybe if they had to earn the money themselves, they wouldn’t be so quick to spend it.”

The purchase is only possible after Iran lifted import bans on expensive goods like foreign cars and new iPhones, yielding to public demand for the products while also trying to mask the dire straits of its economy, The AP reported.

While being described as a way to boost Iran's much-vaunted “resistance economy," the decisions trapped Iranians into buying more affordable locally produced vehicles long derided as “death wagons” and boosted the prices of aging, second-hand iPhones.

They also provide Iran with much-needed tax revenues as its government struggles under international sanctions over its nuclear program. Uncertainty over how US President Donald Trump will deal with Iran also has put pressure on its rial currency, which sits at record lows against the dollar.

Powerful forces within Iran long have been believed to be taking advantage of the sanctions, while those benefiting may just be among the country's most well-off citizens.

"It’s more about perception than reality,” Iranian economist Saeed Leilaz said.

‘Resistance’ economics at play Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, now 85, first proposed the idea nearly 15 years ago as Tehran faced its first round of intense sanctions over its nuclear program, which the West fears puts Iran at the precipice of obtaining an atomic bomb. Iran maintains its program is peaceful — even as it enriches uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels.

“Sanctions are not new for us," Khamenei said in a 2010 speech. "All achievements have been made and all the great movements of the people of Iran have been launched while we were under sanctions.”

In some ways, it's worked for Iran's ruling clerics since Trump unilaterally reimposed sanctions on Tehran after withdrawing America from the 2015 nuclear deal. Iran struck deals with China to continuing buying its crude oil, likely at a discount.

Those in Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which has grown into a major power center under Khamenei, handle the sales — both funding their operations against Israel during the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip and creating a new wealthy elite loyal to Khamenei.

But for the average person, there's clearly a before and an after for the life under the nuclear deal, which saw Iran agree to drastically limit its enrichment and overall stockpile of uranium.

At the time of the deal, the Iranian rial traded at 32,000 to $1. Now, a decade later, $1 was worth 885,000 rials on Tuesday.

The public's savings have evaporated, pushing average Iranians into holding onto gold, real estate and other tangible wealth. Others pursue cryptocurrencies or fall to get-rich schemes.

Iran lifts car and iPhone import restrictions, seeking cash Iran banned the import of foreign cars in 2017, while not allowing iPhones newer than the 13 to be registered on the country’s mobile phone networks. The phone decision set off a scramble for older iPhones, boosting their price, while used car prices for foreign models remain high as well.

In the last Persian year ending in March 2024, Iran imported $3.2 billion worth of mobile phones, customs data shows. The cut for high-end iPhones makes them a lucrative option to plug some of the gaping holes in Iran's government spending — though Iran's foreign currency reserves remain low due to sanctions.

“Lifting restrictions on a few platforms or allowing iPhone imports are the kinds of steps the government can take quickly and with minimal cost to create a sense of progress,” said Leilaz, the economist.

Such decisions also provide a quick win for Iran's reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian with Iran's elite — though it doesn't address any of the longer-term economic problems.

For cars, former President Hassan Rouhani banned imports of fully built foreign vehicles in 2018, after Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the nuclear deal. While in theory protecting Iranian foreign reserves, it also backed up local automobile manufacturers, whose products have long been criticized for not meeting international safety and quality standards — hence their “death wagon” monikers.

Experts believe if Iran's government allowed more lower-priced, higher-quality imports, the country's automobile manufacturers would lose their edge. Restrictions still limit the number of foreign cars that can come into the country and tariffs that Pezeshkian wants lowered may have been again placed at 100%.

“Since the number of newly imported cars is still limited, only a few people can afford them," said Saber, a car dealer in Tehran who spoke on condition only his first name be used to be able to discuss the issue frankly. "As a result, imported cars have skyrocketed in price on the open market.”

What Trump does carries serious consequences for Iran As Iran's economy worsens, its theocracy worries conditions could again push the public back onto the streets in nationwide protests. That's why officials up to Khamenei have backed the idea of talking again to the West.

While Trump has suggested he wants talks, he signed an executive order Feb. 4 calling for putting “Iran’s export of oil to zero,” including to China, which buys Tehran’s crude at a discount. It also seeks a “snapback” of United Nations sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program. If implemented, they could decimate Iran at a time where its people are looking for any sign of optimism.

That includes a car show in Tehran in late January that featured foreign brands like Mazda, Nissan and Toyota, all sought after by Iranians. However, even with the change, Iran's economy still must exist in a world where the US dollar reigns supreme and its rial continues to fall.

“This biggest problem in this country is that everything depends on the dollar," said Saeed Maleki, standing among the vehicles at the show. "Today they tell you a car costs 3 billion rials. But after a week or a month will they still sell this for 3 billion? No! They will charge me with the new rates.”