Al-Mawasi in Rafah in 2023 (left) and 2026, with huge tented camps lining much of the shoreline. Composite: Google
Satellite imagery shows further destruction of homes, businesses and places of worship since fragile ceasefire
An update to Google Maps has revealed the extent of devastation during the three-year Gaza war and the severity of the continuing humanitarian crisis faced by the territory’s 2.3 million inhabitants.
The images were taken in June this year and show further destruction of homes, businesses, places of worship and infrastructure since a fragile ceasefire came into effect almost 12 months ago.
They show huge tented camps lining much of the shoreline, often within a few metres of the sea. Gaza’s once busy main port, now badly damaged and empty of fishing boats, is surrounded by makeshift accommodation. Any available open space in Gaza City is packed with shacks, tents and huts.
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More than 2.1 million displaced people are living in tents and temporary shelters in Gaza, where about 82% of structures – roughly 200,000 buildings – have been damaged, with about two-thirds of those destroyed, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa.
A recent UN assessment estimated that the number of destroyed structures across Gaza had increased by 9% since the declaration of a ceasefire in October 2025.
Donald Trump sings and dances, says that it’s fun to kill everyone … unless he gets distracted or falls asleep.Ed Miliband says that he and the Labour Party are full of shit criminalising people holding signs as terrorists despite anything he says.UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister.
10 September 2026 – Please find below a letter from Dr Natalie Roberts, Executive Director of Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders to the Prime Minister Andy Burnham and the Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband.
Dear Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary,
Congratulations on your appointments as Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom. I am writing to you as the Executive Director of Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in the United Kingdom to request an urgent meeting regarding the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and in Gaza.
Since 1 November 2023, we have repeatedly written to your predecessors to provide evidence of atrocities directly witnessed and experienced by our 1,500 colleagues working in Gaza, to remind the UK of its power and its obligation to act, and to request an urgent high-level meeting. We have never received clear acknowledgement of the evidence that we have provided, nor have we ever been offered that meeting. In July last year we concluded that the UK Government just did not want to acknowledge what everybody else can see: that genocide is being committed in Gaza, and it is being committed with the military, diplomatic, and material support of the UK.
We therefore greatly welcome your decision to sanction illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, to recognise that what is happening in the West Bank is ethnic cleansing, and to align with the 2024 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory is unlawful. Thank you for finally taking some first tangible steps towards action, rather than claiming that the UK could only powerlessly stand by while a foreign government committed war crimes with complete impunity. But while the new UK sanctions are a welcome, and necessary, response to the illegal occupation and spiralling violence in the West Bank, it is difficult for us to understand how they will have any tangible impact on the catastrophic situation in Gaza.
On that subject, we urge you to hear directly from MSF. MSF is the UK’s largest medical humanitarian organisation still operating in Gaza. Since January 2026, we have been prevented by the Israeli authorities from bringing international staff and supplies into Palestine, yet we continue to work at scale across Gaza and the West Bank. Around 1,500 Palestinian MSF staff are providing surgical support, wound care, physiotherapy, maternity and paediatric care, general healthcare, vaccination, and mental health services as well as water production and distribution, under extraordinarily difficult conditions. My Palestinian colleagues see every day, in our hospitals and clinics, the human consequences of political decisions taken far from the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Despite the October 2025 ceasefire, Palestinians in Gaza continue to face daily violence, repeated displacement, severe restrictions on humanitarian access, and appalling living conditions. The situation is characterised by the systematic erosion of Palestinians’ possibility to survive with dignity.
MSF teams witness catastrophic medical needs: traumatic injuries, malnutrition in infants and pregnant women, and rampant infectious disease. The Israeli military is now estimated to occupy at least 60 percent of the Strip, as Gaza has been divided by an unclearly marked and constantly shifting Israeli-military-controlled “yellow line”. MSF teams continue to treat patients suffering from blast injuries, fragment wounds, and blunt trauma caused by explosions and gunshot wounds, including people who are shot by Israeli forces when approaching the shifting boundary. Israeli forces continue to issue sudden displacement orders, forcing Palestinians to flee with almost no warning. Palestinians in Gaza are also dying from preventable diseases and untreated health conditions, as communicable diseases spread amid severe Israeli restrictions on essential supplies and a lack of access to basic services. Israeli authorities are leaving Palestinians to suffer and die through its illegal blockade, and Israel’s deliberate policies of violence, destruction, and denial of basic needs have created a deadly cycle of extreme deprivation, suffering, and death, fuelling its genocidal campaign and violating international humanitarian law. More than two and a half years of global inaction and complicity in the face of genocide have allowed this catastrophe to persist.
Israeli forces have arbitrarily detained hundreds of Palestinian healthcare workers from Gaza since October 2023, holding many without charge and routinely denying access to those imprisoned. They include our colleague, MSF orthopaedic surgeon Dr Mohammed Obeid, who was arrested during an Israeli military raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital in October 2024. Dr Obeid is still detained by Israel without charge, and we are very concerned for his safety and wellbeing.
Fifteen Palestinian colleagues have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, and many more injured. Yet the Israeli military has denied any criminal investigation into the killing or injury of MSF staff. Last month, the Israeli Military Advocate General decided to close without investigation the cases MSF submitted for review: the multiple attacks on an MSF convoy in Gaza City in November 2023 that killed two, and the February 2024 strike on an MSF shelter in Khan Younis that killed two and injured six. With this decision, the Israeli authorities made it clear that there is no prospect of accountability within the Israeli legal system for the killing of our staff, just as there has been no accountability for Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians. Although we support the efforts of the International Courts in pursuing accountability for war crimes, our colleagues, their families, and the Palestinians living in Gaza cannot wait for the outcome of lengthy processes – processes which the Israeli government has anyway stated it considers invalid.
Over a year ago we asked that the UK Government:
Acknowledges and respects the rulings of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and acts decisively to end the war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide committed by the Israeli government in Gaza
Ends all military cooperation with Israel and suspends all arms transfers to its government
Ends all material and diplomatic support to the Israeli government
Speaks out to acknowledge and condemn the genocide in Gaza
Pushes to end the siege and allow unfettered access of humanitarian aid, including medical supplies, into Gaza
Creates a pathway for the evacuation of medical patients from Gaza to the UK to be treated
While the recent shift in UK policy makes progress in responding to those asks, and we once again thank you for showing moral leadership, we would like to meet to discuss further steps the UK Government should take to uphold fully its obligations to act under International Humanitarian Law to protect all civilians in Gaza.
Yours sincerely,
Dr Natalie Roberts
Executive Director of Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF) UK
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
People stage a pro-Palestinian demonstration and call on Labour Party leader Andy Burnham, who is preparing to take office as prime minister, to impose comprehensive sanctions on Israel, in London, United Kingdom on July 18, 2026. [Raşid Necati Aslım – Anadolu Agency
Britain’s new government has rejected calls from 80 MPs and peers to recognise Israel’s genocide in Gaza, impose a full arms embargo and introduce comprehensive sanctions against the occupation state.
The decision has intensified criticism of Prime Minister Andy Burnham and Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband, whose first statements in office raised expectations of a break with the policies of former Prime Minister Keir Starmer but have so far produced little substantive change.
In a cross-party letter led by Labour MP Kim Johnson, members of the House of Commons and House of Lords urged Burnham to recognise the findings of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry, which concluded that Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
I'm one of 80 MPs & Peers calling on the PM to:
– Recognise the UN’s findings on genocide & implement the ICJ ruling in full – Impose sanctions including a full arms embargo – Ban trade that supports Israel’s illegal settlements
The parliamentarians called on the government to “fundamentally change its position” by supporting Palestinian rights and taking steps to prevent further Israeli violations of international law.
They also urged ministers to implement the International Court of Justice’s ruling on Israel’s illegal occupation, impose comprehensive sanctions, introduce a complete arms embargo and prohibit trade in goods and services linked to illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
However, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office declined to endorse any of the demands.
The rejection follows criticism of Miliband’s first statement as foreign secretary, in which he referred explicitly to “Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine” but described Israel’s assault on Gaza only as “conflict in the Middle East”.
British governments and senior ministers have repeatedly made legal and political judgements about Russia’s conduct without waiting for a final international court ruling. The UK described Russia’s invasion as illegal from its outset and accused Russian forces of committing war crimes.
In June 2026, the Commission reported that Israeli authorities and forces continued to commit genocide and other atrocity crimes, including through the deliberate targeting of Palestinian children.
The UN findings are part of a much broader body of expert assessments.
Amnesty International concluded in December 2024 that Israel had committed and was continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem reached the same conclusion in its July 2025 report, Our Genocide. The International Association of Genocide Scholars later declared that Israel’s policies and actions met the legal definition of genocide under the Genocide Convention.
Despite these findings, the British government has maintained that only a court can make a genocide determination.
During a House of Lords debate following the UN Commission’s September 2025 report, ministers insisted that the government would not describe Israel’s actions as genocide until a competent national or international court had ruled on the issue.
Burnham had sought to distance himself from Starmer’s record before entering Downing Street. He acknowledged that Labour “got it wrong” in its initial response to Gaza and admitted that Britain had been too slow to call for a ceasefire.
However, he stopped short of recognising genocide, arguing that the matter should be left to international courts. Green Party deputy leader Mothin Ali accused Burnham of hiding behind the courts when discussing Israel while showing no similar hesitation in condemning Russia.
Ali warned that the duty under the Genocide Convention is to prevent genocide rather than wait until the destruction has been completed and formally adjudicated. Recognising the evidence, he argued, would also raise questions about Britain’s arms exports, surveillance cooperation and wider support for Israel.
