As the world marks World Habitat Day, a moment meant to affirm the right to shelter and human dignity, Gaza stands as a testament to their systematic denial. New data from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics show that since October 2023, more than 190,000 buildings in the Gaza Strip have been damaged or destroyed, including over 102,000 reduced completely to rubble. This is twice the devastation recorded during the first year of the genocidal war, a reflection of how destruction has become both policy and punishment.

By September 2025, over two million people had been forced from their homes, as once-crowded neighbourhoods, from refugee camps to high-rise towers, turned into silent fields of dust and concrete. Satellite images confirm what little remains: the disappearance of tent cities in the north, the expansion of makeshift shelters along Gaza’s southern coast, and a population left with barely 3 to 5 litres of water per day, far below the humanitarian minimum. More than 85 percent of water and sanitation facilities lie in ruins, with recovery costs soaring beyond half a billion dollars.

The catastrophe extends beyond Gaza. In the West Bank and Jerusalem, policies of forced displacement and land confiscation have accelerated, with demolition orders threatening over 1,200 residents in Masafer Yatta and thousands more expelled from Jenin and Tulkarm camps. Across the occupied territories, homes are bulldozed, permits denied, and overcrowded housing on the rise, a silent continuum of erasure.

On a day meant to celebrate the human right to adequate housing, the reality in Palestine exposes a cruel paradox: that for millions, “habitat” has become synonymous not with shelter, but with survival beneath the ruins.