Description

Photos: Published by Haaretz
A street in Gaza City, shot in August 2025. Great destruction and deprivation, alongside attempts to hold on to normalcy.

See [videos] at Haaretz News Source Link

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Carrying water containers, walking between destroyed buildings, or catching a rare moment at the beach: Footage taken on a mobile phone shows what little remains of Gaza City – before the Israeli army's expected occupation

by Liza Rozovsky for Haaretz
September 11th, 2025

A video, recorded while taking a short bicycle ride up Gaza City's seaside Al-Rashid Street, tells the entire story. What used to be the Gaza promenade – one of the most cultivated, in-demand areas of the city – is now in ruins, dotted with bombed-out buildings and countless makeshift tents used as housing by displaced people.

Between the rubble, people insist on maintaining routine in the midst of chaos: Some stand in line for food at a humanitarian kitchen that operates on donations; others carry buckets and pots to collect safe water from a tanker. Children are carrying sacks of food or wet clothes that they washed in the sea.

This video, like other videos – from the bustling beach and from the vicinity of Al-Shifa Hospital – was recorded for Haaretz by a Gaza resident in the weeks before the IDF's decision to advance its operation to occupy Gaza City. This is not journalistic photography documenting breaking news; nor is this professional photography seeking "photogenic" moments. That's why these videos make it possible to see life in Gaza City as it is: great destruction and deprivation, alongside attempts to hold on to normalcy – as evident, for example, in a video from the seaside, in which parents and children are seen taking a dip in the water and playing on the beach.

[Video: Footage from Gaza City's Al-Rashid Street]

This is likely a final peep into this "routine" that took hold in Gaza City. The airstrikes are intensifying and on Tuesday, the IDF issued a blanket call for all residents to evacuate. Many residents are indeed relocating again, for the nth time, while others are staying put or trying to find safer places within the city itself. In any case, as hard and unstable as it was, the "blessed routine" of Gaza City residents is at its end. This is what it used to look like.

[Footage from the beach and the vicinity of Al-Shifa Hospital]