The term genocide applied to Gaza is at the center of an international storm but on the Palestinian “domicide” the photos that come from the strip as death postcards of death by documenting the state of destruction speak every day. Domicide is when in a conflict there is a city a city making that place a territory uninhabitable for a long time, not saving infrastructures or residential buildings, nor hospitals or schools.
Gaza as Dresden in the Second World War
It happened with the bombing of Dresden in the Second World War, in that of Hamburg when the city was razed to the ground by the allies with the precise intention of hitting civilians, such as the English documentary the Second World War – Voices from the front (on Netflix) has well shown. Today it happens with Gaza and before he had also happened in Mariupol (here too there is a documentary that won the Oscar, who showed him dramatically well), even before Aleppo in Syria. The word is “domicide”, in Italian “domicide”, comes from the Latin domus, home, and caedere which means to kill. Therefore, domicide is the mass destruction of homes to make the territory uninhabitable. The term has been used by historians since the beginning of the 2000s but it is only in recent times that the concept has become part of the public debate, so much so that the United Nations discuss the need to classify it as a crime against humanity: “Destroying the homes of civilian civilians is equivalent to reset the identity of the people who live them, their sense of belonging, the same identity”.
28% of hospitals were destroyed
And as well as the count of the dead – at the end of June over 57 thousand of which 18 thousand children (UNICEF data) – that of the destruction of the buildings is also for defect. 28% of hospitals were destroyed, only 19 of the 36 hospitals in Gaza remain operational and just 2000 beds are available for two million inhabitants, according to the WHO data published at the end of May 2025 and after almost 700 attacks against the health services recorded since October 2023. 175 thousand buildings were razed to Gaza. The International Commission of Inquiry of the United Nations in the Palestinian territory occupied has documents the violations of international law since 2021 and states that Israel has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity intentionally taking hospitals, schools and universities in particular. The educational system has been reduced to ruin, after a series of targeted attacks cataloged by the commission of investigation: air attacks, bombings, fires and controlled demolitions.
95% of Gaza educational institutions were damaged or destroyed
As a result, 95% of the Gaza educational institutions were damaged or destroyed and about 700,000 children have no more access to school from October 2023. The analysis of the Satellite Sentinel-1 satellite data of the European Space Agency by Corey Scheri from the City University of New York and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University documents destruction and also comparing the photos of Google Earth. The English newspaper The Guardian since the beginning of the conflict has relaunched the term domicide and periodically publishes the images of the before and after to testify the destructive effect. (HANDLE).