Looking back on 2025 in Gaza: a year of fire and destruction

2025 was not a normal year for the people of Gaza. It was a year of open humanitarian suffering, in which more than 2.4 million people lived under Israel’s genocide, continuous aggression, a suffocating siege and systematic starvation, making every day a battle for survival.

A year of fire and destruction in Gaza

Over the course of 283 days of aggression, the occupation dropped more than 112,000 tonnes of explosives on the Gaza Strip, destroying nearly 90% of its infrastructure and taking military control of about 55% of the Strip’s area. Even after the ceasefire agreement was announced, Israel’s violations continued for 82 days, leaving people’s lives suspended between bombardment, fear and anticipation.

Unending bloodshed and tragic figures

In 2025, Israel killed 25,717 martyrs who arrived at hospitals and more than 3,400 missing persons whose fate remains unknown. Children, women and older people accounted for about half of the victims, reflecting the extent to which Israel directly targeted civilians. Hundreds of people died of hunger and malnutrition, while kidney patients, pregnant women, and infants lost their lives as a result of the collapse of the health system and lack of care.

The health sector in Gaza on the brink of collapse

Israel’s genocide put 22 hospitals out of service, and it destroyed hundreds of ambulances and civil defence vehicles, making it almost impossible to reach the wounded and injured. The occupation left thousands of patients unable to travel for treatment, including children in urgent need of medical evacuation and cancer patients facing a slow death.

Education: a dream postponed for entire generations

In one year, Israel destroyed dozens of educational institutions, it damaged 95% of schools in the sector, and it deprived some 785,000 students of their right to education. Students, teachers and academics were killed, and schools were transformed from places of learning into shelters for displaced persons or lifeless rubble.

Destroyed homes and endless displacement

Israel destroyed the homes of more than 213,000 families – either completely or partially. It forcibly displaced nearly two million people, some of them multiple times amid its direct targeting of shelters. Tents have replaced homes, and cold and rain have turned displacement into a daily tragedy that has claimed new lives.

Hunger as a weapon of war

Israel closed all crossings for 220 days, and ir prevented more than 132,000 aid trucks from entering, while it targeted charitable kitchens and distribution centres, and it killed hundreds of relief workers. Israel threatened hundreds of thousands of children with starvation, and 40,000 infants faced the risk of death due to lack of food.

Gaza: a whole year of resilience

Despite this bleak picture, the people of Gaza lived through 2025 clinging to life, resisting hunger, fear and destruction with willpower and patience. It was a year of continuous pain, but it was also a year that revealed the scale of an unprecedented humanitarian tragedy and presented the international community with a moral and historical test that it has so far failed to pass.

Thus passed the days of 2025 in Gaza: days heavy with tears, laden with blood, but bearing witness to a people who did not give up, despite all the death, siege and destruction imposed upon them.

Featured image via the Canary