Google Maps reveals Gaza erased: Entire cities reduced to rubble

New satellite images from Google Maps show the full scale of destruction in the Gaza Strip. The photos, taken in early 2026, reveal that entire neighborhoods and cities have been completely destroyed. Israel has barred journalists from entering Gaza for three years. The southern Gaza city of Rafah was home to about 300,000 Palestinians before the offensive. Then-U.S. President Joe Biden warned Israel not to send tanks into Rafah, calling it a "red line" for the United States, Israel's main ally. But Israel took the city in May 2024. Today, Rafah no longer exists. Satellite images show that its famous neighborhoods, such as Tel al Sultan and al Saudi, have been reduced to rubble — street by street, house by house. Two towns in southern Khan Younis — Juzaa and Abasan al Kabira, where more than 35,000 people lived — have suffered the same fate. "Looking at these images, it feels as if someone took each of these houses, put them in a mortar and crushed them," Gazan poet Mosab Abu Toha said on X. Abu Toha won a Pulitzer Prize for his essays in The New Yorker. **Cities wiped out** From above, much of the Gaza Strip has nothing left: no buildings, no paved roads, no mosques, restaurants or universities. In northern Gaza City, the images show a makeshift tent camp inside the Palestine Stadium, where local football teams once played. Destruction is widespread both inside and around Al Shifa Hospital, Gaza's largest medical complex. Israeli forces besieged it in November 2023 and again in March 2024 for weeks. Improvised mass graves are visible in its courtyard, as many Gazans could not safely reach cemeteries. By September 2025, the United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT) estimated that 83% of Gaza City's infrastructure had been damaged by Israeli airstrikes, and that 17,734 structures had been completely destroyed. Israeli bulldozers have continued to operate since then. Further north, the towns of Beit Hanoun and Yabalia appear almost entirely burned and in ruins. Their large farmland, orchards and greenhouses near the border have been flattened. Three years after October 7, 1.9 million Gazans — out of a population of just over two million — remain forcibly displaced, according to United Nations data. More than 371,888 homes have been destroyed or damaged, and more than half of the 36 hospitals are no longer working. The UN estimates that Gaza has been set back 77 years in terms of development. An independent UN investigation commission concluded in September 2025 that Israel is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip, citing the killing of civilians, mental harm to the Palestinian population, deliberate physical destruction, and measures blocking births.