Israel Demolished 50 High-Rises in Two Days. Will My Apartment Building Be Next?

Part of the Series

Struggle and Solidarity: Writing Toward Palestinian Liberation

Every day we witness a new chain of brutal crimes committed by the Israeli occupation. Why does no one dare to stop it? How can a world stripped of humanity watch us burn alive? How are we expected to answer sudden phone calls ordering us to evacuate, threatening: “We will destroy everything around you”? Has everything we own become Israeli property to be demolished at will?

Have rulers become so consumed with protecting their wealth and interests that pleasing Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu matters more than listening to their consciences? From Gaza, we watch as people across the world raise their voices in condemnation of these atrocities, but their governments remain silent, eager to secure whatever gains they can reap from their cowardice.

In just two days, the occupation destroyed 50 residential buildings and towers. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has warned that if Hamas does not give up all weapons, “Gaza will be destroyed and you will be annihilated.” The tragedy is that many of these buildings were already partially destroyed, yet families struggled to repair them in order to survive. But it has become clear that the occupation’s goal was not merely to damage — it was to strip us of every shelter by leveling them completely to the ground.

As the destruction spread, the fear became personal and immediate. On the morning of September 5, 2025, the bombing escalated to an intense degree. My friend Sally, who lives near Al-Daraj neighborhood in Gaza City, called me and said, “We gathered all we could carry to head south, even though the situation there is catastrophic too. But it’s clear the occupation has begun to wipe out my area completely. If we stay, we will certainly lose our lives.”

Her words made the devastation feel closer, more urgent — it was no longer just numbers on a page.

I hung up the phone only to hear the news of another threat — this time targeting the Mushtaha Tower in Al-Rimal, the same neighborhood where I live, but near the Ansar area. That tower had already been targeted multiple times, yet it still sheltered no fewer than 100 families.

Imagine receiving a sudden phone call: “Evacuate immediately, we will bomb the tower!” Soon after, the ground shook violently. I realized that Israel was using a different kind of missile — one designed to level buildings completely. In that moment, I understood: This occupier selects one weapon to burn and shred human bodies, and another to erase entire structures.

An hour later, my mother’s friend, who lives just a street away, called to warn that the building next to hers would soon be bombed and that they had to evacuate immediately. These repeated phone calls forced us to quickly pack our belongings in case of an evacuation order — especially since we live in a high-rise apartment building as well. Although the building where we live is half destroyed and the apartment opposite ours has already been obliterated, my father repaired the apartment we currently live in, despite the danger of living next to a bombed-out unit with no wall left. He has always repeated, “Better than a tent.”

As we were packing and preparing to flee, many residents across Gaza City were also ordered to evacuate their homes. I wondered what had suddenly happened overnight — would every building in Gaza now be bombed? But then I connected it to what happened to my uncle that same dawn, on September 5. An apartment directly beneath his in the Abu Dhabi Building, which is located in the Al-Saraya area of Gaza Governorate, was struck, killing everyone inside. When I asked my uncle Iyad what had happened, he told me, “We heard a powerful explosion, but strangely we heard no voices calling for help. When we looked at the apartment, we found it completely burned out!”

No one in the apartment below my uncle’s survived. I realized then that this incident, which began at dawn on Friday, was only a warning of how the entire day would unfold.

But how have these horrors turned into lessons of life for us? After the bombing of the Mushtaha Tower, the displaced people left with nothing but their lives. Since then, every displaced family in every tower in this neighborhood has been preparing their belongings in advance, ready to flee at a moment’s notice.

I saw the anguish in the eyes of those who escaped that apartment building — they left without even a mattress to sleep on, knowing there would be nothing left to return to. In Gaza, we understand this bitter truth: We hold on to our belongings as tightly as we hold on to life itself.

“Some of us ask: ‘Where can we go?’ Others say: ‘We will stay,’” Abdel Nasser, one of the residents of Mushtaha Tower, told me. “But every place in Gaza is filled with bombing and death. It no longer matters where we go, because death follows us — whether by airstrikes or by hunger.

Meanwhile, on September 6, 2025, the residents of Al-Sousi residential tower in the neighborhood of Tel al-Hawa received a chilling warning. The apartment building had already been struck during the ground invasion, but this time it appeared the Israeli military was bent on its complete annihilation. Families were given just 20 minutes warning before 15 floors, crowded with displaced families, were erased from the skyline. In a moment that captured both terror and resilience, residents hurled their mattresses out of the windows — trying to salvage at least one possession during the precious seconds they had to escape with their lives.

The very next day, on September 7, the people of the Al-Ru’ya building in Al-Rimal neighborhood faced the same fate. This was not just any building; it was a sprawling five-story structure, vast in width, that once held apartments, a sports club, and commercial units. During the war, it had become a fragile refuge for families with nowhere else to go. Yet in an instant, it too was flattened — another sanctuary turned to dust.

In Gaza, after losing everything we owned, even a simple wall to shelter us or a roof over our heads has become a fragile hope we cling to. Yet, in the midst of this relentless war, the occupation insists on erasing even that sliver of hope. We live on the edge of death every single moment, as if our very existence is a crime they are determined to obliterate.

On September 8, 2025, at 1:00 am, I was asleep and exhausted. Every day, my body has been prepared to flee, tense and terrified, haunted by the thought that the worst is yet to come. Suddenly, I was jolted awake by the desperate cries of a mother pleading for help. What was happening? Sadly, I have grown used to the sound of bombings and planes overhead, but I will never get used to the screams of people. And I knew her pain too well — for I, too, once screamed for rescue in the early days of the war. But back then, there were ambulances to answer our cries. Today, there is nothing.

The mother was screaming “Help me!” because there was an Apache attack helicopter hovering above the tents of civilians in the Al-Rimal neighborhood, on the same street where I live, between Al-Jundi Al-Majhoul Street and Al-Wahda Street, relentlessly firing missiles. There was no one who could help her. The helicopter hovered above, ready to kill at any moment. We could hear her cries, yet had no idea exactly where she was. She called for half an hour, crying, while I wept with her, asking myself: Will it be my turn one day? When? Where? How?

By morning, the devastating news arrived: two little girls in that tent had been killed. It was then that I understood why that mother had cried as if she were losing her mind.

On September 9, 2025, my father, Imad, received a call from a friend abroad. His friend told him, “Imad, this time you must leave northern Gaza. It will be erased completely. All of us watching from outside can see it clearly, and we believe your safety, and that of your family, is more important than anything. Try to head south!”

We knew my father’s friend was deeply worried for us. But what no one seems to grasp is that death hangs over every inch of Gaza.

I write these words now as the earth trembles beneath me. My body no longer shakes from fear — it has grown so frail, so weak, that it no longer even has the strength to tremble.