The Israel-Hamas war — in maps and charts

Israel-Hizbollah: Netanyahu insists Israel will continue to hit Hizbollah targets

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Thursday that Israel would press on with its offensive against Hizbollah in Lebanon, casting doubts on a US-led diplomatic push for a ceasefire.

“We won’t stop until we achieve all our objectives — first and foremost the return of the northern residents to their homes securely,” he said. “This is the policy. Let no one mistake it.”

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Netanyahu was speaking a day after US President Joe Biden and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron proposed a 21-day ceasefire between Israel and the Lebanese militant group.

US officials hope the truce would allow time to negotiate a more durable ceasefire between Israel and Hizbollah, and also put pressure on the Palestinian militant group Hamas to accept the terms of a ceasefire-for-hostages deal with Israel in Gaza.

But the proposal was met with criticism in Israel, particularly from far-right members of Netanyahu’s coalition. Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s ultranationalist finance minister, said the campaign should “end in one scenario: crushing Hizbollah and removing its ability to harm the residents of the north”.

The FT has gathered estimates of damage around the Israel-Lebanon border with help from researchers at the CUNY Graduate Center and Oregon State University. The researchers apply a technique using imagery from “synthetic aperture radar” satellites, which can detect changes to buildings and is unaffected by cloud cover.

Corey Scher, one of the researchers who analysed satellite passes to build estimates for building damage, said the technique generated a “look at damage signals across most of Lebanon as of September 20 and since the beginning of hostilities in October 2023”.

This map marks areas where the analysis suggested clusters of more than 25 damaged buildings within an area of around 0.75km.

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Israel-Hamas: Death toll in Gaza crosses 40,000; around 100 hostages remain in captivity

The Israel Defense Forces launched air and land offensives in Gaza in response to Hamas’s cross-border assault in southern Israel. Hamas killed more than 1,200 people during the October 7 attack and seized about 250 hostages, according to Israeli officials, who say around 100 hostages remain in captivity.

The death toll from Israel’s offensive in Gaza passed 40,000 in August, according to Palestinian health officials.

According to data from UN OCHA and Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, around 640 Palestinians in the West Bank and about 1,900 Israelis and foreign nationals in Israel have been killed since October.

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After October 7, the IDF moved into northern Gaza before sweeping south towards Khan Younis and then Rafah. More than 2mn people in Gaza have been displaced by the conflict, with many leaving Rafah and some moving to al-Mawasi or other IDF-declared “humanitarian areas”.

Humanitarian workers inside Gaza have faced significant danger during the conflict, with an unprecedented number being killed.

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Food and water insecurity in Gaza: UN warns food supplies dwindling as famine looms

Food supplies into Gaza have diminished even further since international experts raised the threat of famine in the enclave, according to the regional director of the World Food Programme.

“We clearly don’t manage to bring enough food into Gaza,” Corinne Fleischer told the Financial Times in August after returning from the territory, citing access problems including the closure of most crossings, long delays at Israeli checkpoints and looting by gangs inside Gaza.

Fleischer said the WFP needed to bring in 24,000 tonnes of food per month to feed 1.1mn people, or half Gaza’s population. UNRWA, the other main UN agency working in Gaza, is responsible for feeding the other half.

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Aid deliveries containing urgently needed food, water and medical supplies have not been able to enter Gaza at their usual levels since the war began. The shortages have worsened since IDF troops took “operational control” of the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing on May 6.

The US built a $230mn floating pier to help get more aid into Gaza, but shipments were affected by storms and poor sea conditions, and the project was mothballed in July.

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Since Israel launched its Gaza offensive, damage to infrastructure and lack of fuel and electricity have also led to a severe water shortage.

Before the war, Gaza sourced most of its water from an underground aquifer or from Israeli state-owned water company Mekorot. According to an April UN OCHA report, two of the Mekorot pipelines have been closed and the third is operating at only partial capacity. Israel has recently moved towards reopening them after pressure from the US.

Meanwhile, only one of the six wastewater treatment plants and two out of three desalination plants are partially working.

Infrastructure damage in Gaza: More than half of buildings damaged by fighting

According to damage assessments from researchers at the CUNY Graduate Center and Oregon State University, more than half of all buildings across the Gaza Strip have suffered damage, rising to nearly 80 per cent in Gaza City.

The damage in Khan Younis and Rafah has also increased as Israel expanded its offensive from northern Gaza to the rest of the territory.

October 7 2023: Hamas attacks Israel

As much of Israel slept, Hamas militants launched a multipronged dawn assault on the country from the Gaza Strip.

The attack began in the early hours of the morning on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, with thousands of rockets fired at Israeli towns and cities. Many were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome defence system, but satellite imagery showed fires and smoke rising from locations that were hit.

Hundreds of Hamas fighters simultaneously attacked by land, air and sea, breaching the fortified barrier between Gaza and Israel.

Militants used motorised paragliders to attack the Supernova music festival, which was taking place not far from the Gaza border. After flying in, they shot many Israelis and took others as hostages.

After breaching the Gaza fence, armed Hamas fighters targeted Israeli communities and military sites at several locations, going door-to-door and performing execution-style killings as well as taking hostages.

More than 1,200 Israeli civilians and troops were killed on October 7, according to Israeli officials — making it the deadliest attack on the country since its foundation.

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Visual and data team: Aditi Bhandari, Jana Tauschinski, Janina Conboye, Peter Andringa, Steven Bernard, Chris Campbell, Chris Cook, Sam Joiner, Lucy Rodgers, Ian Bott, Dan Clark and Alan Smith