On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on southern Israel, killing mostly civilians and taking 251 hostages.
This triggered an all-out war between Israel and Hamas, considered one of the deadliest in the region’s recent history.
The BBC has been collecting data throughout the war and speaking to some of those affected by the conflict to discover the stories behind the figures.
Fatma Edaama and her family have always lived in northern Gaza. They have witnessed months of carnage, destruction and hunger.
Fatma describes their living conditions as “humiliating and shameful”.
He feels as if he has been in a deep coma for a year and that one day he will wake up and see the Gaza he once knew: “beautiful and full of life.”
Fatma is hopeful. “We will rebuild it and bring it back to life,” he says determinedly.
Life and death in Gaza
By Ashraf al-Attar, The war has changed his life forever.
Ashraf works as a nurse at the European Hospital in the southern city of Khan Yunis.
He told the BBC that his wife and six children were killed in an Israeli attack on Deir al Balah, in central Gaza, “in a matter of seconds, all at once.”
Ashraf’s wife, Hala, was an employee of UNRWA, the UN Palestine Refugee Agency.
His eldest son, Ihsen, was 15 years old. Their youngest daughter, Wateen, was only 20 months old.
Ashraf and Hala also had 10-year-old quadruplets – two boys and two girls. Ashraf and Hala used to refer to all of them as “gifts from God.”
The Israeli military does not usually comment on specific attacks, so it did not immediately provide information about the attack that killed Ashraf’s family in the early hours of August 18.
A statement released a day later stated that the army had carried out an operation on the outskirts of Deir al-Balah with the stated objective of “eliminating terrorists and destroying combat facilities above and below ground.”
Hala and her six children are just some of the more than 40,000 Palestinians killed since the beginning of the war in Gaza.
There has also been an uptick in violence in the occupied West Bank since October 7.
As of September 23, 2024, 693 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, according to the UN. Among them are 676 killed at the hands of Israeli forces and 12 at the hands of Israeli settlers.
Israel says the West Bank raids are aimed at stopping deadly Palestinian attacks on Israelis in the West Bank and Israel. The current Israeli government has allowed the expansion of illegal settlements in the area.
Palestinians fear that the right-wing Israeli government try to make settlements in the West Bank irreversible.
The situation in Israel
In the October 7 attack, considered the deadliest in Israel’s history, more than 1,200 people diedaccording to the latest figure provided by the Israeli authorities at the beginning of November 2023.
In November 2023, the BBC collected evidence showing that five Palestinian armed groups joined Hamas in the October 7 attack on Israel, after training together in military-style exercises since 2020.
That same day, Hamas and related groups they took 251 people hostage in Gaza.
Over the past year, some of those hostages were freed, several of them through diplomatic negotiations and others in military operations.
Yarden Bibas, 34, along with his wife, Shiri, and their two children, were among those taken hostage by Hamas.
On November 29, 2023, Hamas claimed that Shiri and her two sons had died in an Israeli airstrike while they were captive. The Israeli government has said it is verifying the claim.
Orfi Bibas Levy is Yarden’s sister. She is devastated by the fate of her brother and his family, but he still has hope that they are still alive.
She says she’s not sure how long they can survive in captivity, which she calls “inhumane,” especially for children that age.
Orfi assured the BBC that he is “fighting to keep the faith.”
Ada Sagi, a 75-year-old Israeli peace activist, was kidnapped by Hamas from her home in Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7 and held in Gaza for 53 days.
She was one of 105 Israeli hostages freed during a precarious week-long ceasefire, which began on November 24, 2023.
The exchange also included 240 Palestinian prisoners who were released from Israeli jails.
“Now I don’t believe in peace”he states.
Diplomatic efforts to stop the war have so far failed.
Millions of displaced
Gaza’s population is displaced: there is nowhere safe to go
As of September 30, 2024, the UN estimates that the population of Gaza is around 2.1 million. 90% of them have been displaced.
Throughout the year of the war, the Israeli army has issued evacuation orders, directing the population to demarcated “safe zones.”
A UNICEF report from August 2024 stated that 1.7 million people from Gaza had been directed to an area of 48 square kilometers. This creates a population density of more than 35 thousand people per square kilometer.
Njud Abu Kalub, 31, is one of an estimated 1.9 million displaced people in Gaza.
Njud and her four children had to move 11 times due to evacuation orders or Israeli attacks.
Sometimes they also fled from overcrowding and disease.
He now lives in a makeshift tent in Al-Mawasi, a sandy desert area of Khan Younis. Israel had designated it as a safe zone, but it was subsequently attacked. Njud does not plan to move again.
Like many of Gaza’s displaced people, Njud Abu Kalub will have nowhere to return to when this war ends.
In March of this year, UN experts stated that More than 70% of all homes in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed since the beginning of this war.
In the first six days of the war alone, Israeli aviation dropped more than 6,000 bombs on Gaza.
The Israeli operation in Gaza began in the north of the strip and moved across the map until it reached Rafah, on the border with Egypt, causing enormous damage throughout the territory.
40 million tons of debris
As of early July 2024, the UN estimated that more than 40 million tons of debris had accumulated from the destruction of structures in Gaza.
This is equivalent to Every square meter of land in Gaza is covered by 115 kilos of rubble.
The UN estimates that it could take 15 years and more than half a billion dollars to clear the rubble, which poses a deadly threat to the people of Gaza as it may contain unexploded ordnance and harmful substances.
“It would take at least until 2040 to restore only housing that has been completely destroyed during the war” this is “under optimistic scenarios,” the UN Development Program assessed in its May 2024 report.
Asil lost his brother in this war. Her mother has cancer and her family’s attempts to get her out of Gaza for treatment have been unsuccessful.
His father suffers from serious kidney disease.
On difficult days, He feels like he has nothing left to live for.he told the BBC.
On her most optimistic days, Asil says all she wants is for her mother and father to receive treatment and to be able to leave Gaza to join her fiancé in Cyprus when the war is over.
Finding a way to end the war with a lasting ceasefire, although desperately desired by those scarred by the conflict, is proving increasingly difficult.
Instead, the situation becomes more complex and violence escalates rapidly, spreading throughout the Middle East.