From the sky, Gaza is a wasteland of ruins and graves

From an altitude of just two thousand feet, Gaza appears as if time itself has abandoned it. The view from a Jordanian military aircraft, circling above with its cargo of humanitarian aid, reveals a jagged landscape of shattered concrete and lifeless roads. Neighborhoods are no longer distinguishable by blocks or boulevards but by the craters that have consumed them. Once-bustling districts lie flattened, broken into skeletal remains of buildings that once held families, markets, and hope. It looks like the aftermath of a natural disaster, a biblical reckoning perhaps, or the excavation site of an ancient city lost to time. But this devastation was not carved by wind, water, or time. It was manufactured—deliberately and recently.

Gaza, until less than two years ago, was alive. Despite a long history of conflict and blockade, it was a place where resilience had taken root. Children played in alleyways, traders shouted prices in crowded markets, and families gathered in small courtyards shaded by olive trees. There were schools and hospitals, mosques and apartment towers. Gaza was not frozen in struggle—it was animated by a people who carried on despite it. That Gaza no longer exists. What remains is a landscape more suited to a post-apocalyptic film than to a modern-day city on the Mediterranean.

The flight that revealed this reality was organized by the Jordanian military as part of a resumption of humanitarian airdrops coordinated with Israeli forces. In the absence of functioning land routes or political will to open them meaningfully, airlifts have become the primary means of delivering food and medical supplies to the strip. The plane carried three tonnes of aid—well-packaged, well-intentioned, and woefully insufficient. It was a symbolic act more than a structural solution, a gesture of intervention in a setting where infrastructure, trust, and human security have all collapsed.

The journalists on board were granted rare permission to observe Gaza from the air—a privilege denied to the majority of the world’s press since October 7, when Israel barred foreign reporters from entering Gaza in the wake of the Hamas-led attacks. That ban has remained in place through 21 months of relentless bombing and siege. It is one of the only times in modern warfare that such a large-scale conflict has unfolded with minimal independent observation from within. As a result, much of what the world knows about the war has come from Palestinian journalists reporting at great personal risk, and often at the cost of their lives. More than 230 journalists have been killed in Gaza since the war began—an extraordinary and tragic number that underscores the scale of danger and silencing on the ground.

Even at cruising altitude, it is possible to identify locations marked by unspeakable violence. The aircraft flies over northern Gaza and Gaza City, revealing dense urban areas reduced to granular rubble. Roads are torn apart. Schools have disappeared. High-rise buildings once silhouetted against the Mediterranean skyline are now unrecognizable mounds of concrete dust. Without context, it would be difficult to tell that any of this was once a functioning city. It looks more like a ruin discovered in the desert than a modern urban space ravaged by recent decisions.

Only through a 400mm camera lens can one discern the faintest hints of life: a small group of figures standing in the wreckage, dwarfed by the debris around them. They are invisible to the naked eye. This is not just a matter of visual distance. It is the result of physical and political distancing, enforced by blockade, air superiority, and silence.

As the plane nears the Nuseirat refugee camp, the rear hatch opens. Pallets of aid slide out and parachutes deploy, carrying food and medical relief toward the ground. The operation, precise and practiced, reflects the coordination between the Jordan Armed Forces and allied countries. According to Jordanian military figures, 140 airdrop missions have been conducted by Jordan alone, with another 293 in collaboration with other nations. A total of 325 tonnes of aid have been delivered since the campaign resumed in July.

But those numbers conceal more than they reveal. Humanitarian agencies are clear: the airdrops are inadequate. While they create the appearance of action, they are a deeply inefficient and insufficient substitute for ground-based aid delivery. The math is damning. In the first 21 months of war, airdrops conducted over 104 days provided the equivalent of only four days’ worth of food for Gaza’s population. What’s more, they carry inherent dangers. In at least two separate incidents, parachutes malfunctioned or missed their targets, resulting in fatal injuries. Twelve people drowned in the sea while trying to retrieve drifting food packages. Others were killed by the very pallets meant to deliver life-saving goods.

Continuing south, the aircraft passes over Deir al-Balah in central Gaza. In a part of the Baraka area, the crew observes the location where, on May 22, an 11-year-old girl named Yaqeen Hammad was killed. Known online as Gaza’s youngest social media influencer, she had documented her family’s displacement with rare grace and optimism. She died while watering flowers in a makeshift camp garden—one of the last fragments of beauty amid chaos.

Near Khan Younis, another layer of horror unfolds. This city, once home to key medical institutions and residential blocks, has endured one of the longest sieges of the war. In May, the home of Dr. Alaa al-Najjar, a pediatrician with the al-Tahrir hospital, was bombed. She was on duty at the time. Her husband and nine of her ten children were killed. These are not isolated incidents—they are emblematic of the war’s totality. The physical destruction is mirrored by the disintegration of families, communities, and professional networks.

From above, Gaza’s scale becomes clearer. It is a narrow strip of land—just 365 square kilometers—yet it has absorbed more destruction per square foot than perhaps any modern territory since World War II. It is more than four times smaller than Greater London, and within that confined geography, over 60,000 people have been killed, according to local health authorities. Many thousands more remain trapped under collapsed buildings, unnamed and unrecovered. The notion of ‘post-war reconstruction’ presupposes the existence of post-war governance, planning, and capital. None of that currently exists for Gaza.

The Jordanian flight eventually turns back toward King Abdullah II airbase in Ghabawi. As the aircraft tilts, a soldier gestures toward the hazy edge of the horizon. Below is Rafah, the southernmost point of the Gaza Strip. It, too, is now largely unrecognizable. Since the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, backed by Israel and the US, assumed control of aid delivery in the south, hundreds have died in stampedes and airstrikes during desperate attempts to retrieve food. On March 23, an Israeli military strike on a convoy of Palestinian emergency vehicles killed 15 medics and rescue workers. They were later buried in a mass grave near the site.

What Gaza has experienced is not just the tragedy of a war—it is the near-total breakdown of the international humanitarian system. There are supposed to be protocols, conventions, and institutional levers that ensure access to aid, press freedom, and civilian protection even in times of conflict. What this war has exposed is that those norms are negotiable. They fracture under the weight of geopolitical inertia and exceptionalism. The damage inflicted on Gaza is not limited to its buildings or people—it is also a collapse of accountability.

The question now is not simply how Gaza will rebuild. It is whether the systems that once promised to assist in that rebuilding even exist in usable form. The international community has watched this catastrophe unfold in slow motion, constrained by diplomatic complexity, domestic politics, and strategic alliances. While planes continue to circle with crates of rice and bandages, the deeper absences remain unaddressed: there is no roadmap, no reparation fund, no coordinating body prepared to lead the recovery of a society that has been so comprehensively dismantled.

When the journalists on the Jordanian flight disembarked, a quiet question lingered among them: when will we see Gaza again—not from the sky, not in photos, but from within, on the ground, as a place being lived in rather than buried?

After what has already been lost, the question of what more can be destroyed feels almost redundant. But perhaps the real question is what systems must be rebuilt—not just in Gaza, but around it—to ensure the next war is not allowed to erase a city with this much finality.