It has been two years since the Israeli military, in retaliation for Hamas’s attacks, launched an offensive that, after 20 days of extremely violent bombardment, quickly changed in nature.

The gradual reoccupation of the Gaza Strip, conducted by Israeli infantry and armored units, was effectively accompanied by the systematic destruction of the Palestinian enclave as a place fit for human life.

All 12 of Gaza’s universities were systematically demolished, and 97% of its schools were either completely or partially destroyed. Town halls and other administrative buildings were also targeted, on the grounds that they had alleged links to Hamas’s “terrorist” structure, including when they solely served as offices for the Islamist movement’s civil branch. The same accusation – which was never substantiated – was used by Israeli propaganda to justify successive assaults on the Gaza Strip’s roughly 30 hospitals.

An emblematic institution

The case of Nasser Hospital, in Khan Yunis, serves as a particularly revealing example of this Israeli relentlessness. A public institution, the largest in the southern Gaza Strip, the hospital came under attack on December 17, 2023, and a teenage girl was killed in the maternity ward. Thousands of civilians then crowded into the hospital grounds, hoping that it would be spared by the invading forces. They were mistaken.

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