00:00If you look at recent satellite pictures of Gaza's coastline,
00:07you can see the outline of a once-thriving hotel and restaurant industry.
00:13Before and after images show a beachfront transformed into a sea of tents.
00:21A busy port that provided income for 10% of Gaza's population, empty.
00:29Now, people are more likely to catch fish that falls from the sky.
00:44People who lived and worked on this part of the Mediterranean coast for generations
00:49are afraid they may never be able to return and rebuild.
01:00There have been grand plans for Gaza's coast before,
01:06and even now, amid the destruction, it is a coveted slice of land.
01:19We talked to fishermen, business owners, and their families,
01:23and then zoomed out to see exactly how their beloved coastline has been transformed.
01:29And if there is any chance, they will get it back.
01:37The port in Gaza City was once the center of the local fishing industry.
01:42About 4,000 fishermen worked along the coast, providing food for many more,
01:49in a place where most people relied on humanitarian aid.
01:55Israel has controlled access to the enclave since the Six-Day War in 1967,
02:00except for a short border with Egypt in the south.
02:05In recent decades, it has increasingly sealed the Gaza Strip off from the outside world.
02:12Even access to the sea, Gaza's only window on the wider world, is under Israeli military control.
02:28When we first met Ahmad Abu Hamada in 2020,
02:32fishermen like him were not allowed to go farther than six nautical miles from the coast.
02:38Far enough to find sardines and shrimp, but not much more.
02:49In the fall of 2023, Ahmad was catching just enough to get by.
02:57Then, on October 7, the militant group Hamas launched a surprise attack into Israel,
03:03killing more than 1,000 people and taking hundreds of hostages.
03:12Israel began bombing targets across Gaza, including the port.
03:18After October 11, satellite images showed a gaping hole in the seawall.
03:24And two weeks later, we could make out these impact craters.
03:30The hundreds of boats visible before the war were almost entirely gone, or sunk.
03:39Less than a week after the war started,
03:42the Israeli military ordered almost half of Gaza's 2.3 million people to evacuate to the south,
03:50including Ahmad, the fisherman.
03:53We tracked him down to a large makeshift camp close to the Egyptian border,
03:58where he was sheltering with his wife and five children.
04:03When we spoke to Ahmad on a video call,
04:05he said his family had lost all their fishing equipment and boats, worth about $150,000.
04:29Chocolate and chips.
04:33Chocolate and chips.
04:36And we make fish.
04:39We haven't eaten fish in a long time.
04:46Fishermen who do dare to go to sea, even in shallow waters,
04:50now risk being shot by Israeli patrol boats or helicopters.
04:55Israel says it targets boats it suspects of transporting weapons for Hamas.
05:01But according to local authorities,
05:0390% of Gaza's fishing boats were destroyed within a couple of months of the start of the war.
05:24My children.
05:30Everything is available to you.
05:32I will teach you the best education.
05:34I will teach you how to live with the best families.
05:42Tourism in Gaza has also been torn apart.
05:47Before the start of this latest war,
05:49there were high hopes for the luxury hotel industry.
05:54This was Gaza's first five-star hotel,
05:57less than two miles up the coast from the port.
06:01It cost $45 million to build in 2011,
06:05boasting marble floors, five restaurants and swimming pools.
06:11Satellite images show it in ruins.
06:14The only visitors to the area today are people searching for food, like Mohamed Al-Halabi.
06:44Each parachute can carry over 1,000 pounds of aid.
06:47But that can turn deadly.
07:15There's a man. There's a man in a cell.
07:18His belt is torn.
07:26What happened to him?
07:28He was hit by a cartridge.
07:30Thank God you're safe.
07:32This is one of the citizens.
07:34We got this from the aid fund.
07:38Dessert.
07:39This is Egyptian.
07:41This is tuna.
07:43People are risking their lives to get help.
07:50Less than a mile away from the beach,
07:52Mohamed's neighborhood, Al-Maqousi Towers, is also in ruins.
07:58Before the war, I had more than I had now.
08:01But everything has been destroyed and gone with this war.
08:08This is all that's left of his personal office.
08:13Mohamed was a graphic designer for Al-Isra University.
08:19Israel blew it up in a massive controlled explosion,
08:22saying Hamas used the building for military activities.
08:26Even with the aid drops,
08:28not enough supplies have been getting through.
08:31And Mohamed says people here have resorted to eating leaves
08:35and even animal feed.
08:41Before the war,
08:43Hamas used the building for military activities,
08:46saying Hamas used the building for military activities,
08:49saying Hamas used the building for military activities,
08:54Before the war,
08:56decades of tight restrictions imposed by Israel
08:59pushed some of Gaza's fishermen onto land.
09:04These dark circles are pools full of fish.
09:08Or at least they were.
09:11We met one of the owners of this fish farm in 2020.
09:16He showed us around the farm and the restaurant next door.
09:21With 70 workers,
09:23the farm produced 30 metric tons of fish every month,
09:27mostly sea bream.
09:37But two days after the bombing started,
09:39Israel shut off Gaza's electricity.
09:42The pumps and filters at the farm stopped working.
09:46All the fish died.
09:49Today, the pools are dry.
09:53And satellite images show the farm is now
09:56at the center of a large improvised camp
09:59for hundreds of displaced families.
10:06Hassan fled to Egypt four months after the war started.
10:10He and his business partners say they have lost around $15 million.
10:17Some family members stayed behind to keep an eye on the farm.
10:28This is Mousa Zaroub, a brother of one of the owners.
10:33The farm's solar panels are mostly gone.
10:36The structures are now used to build shelters
10:39or simply dry laundry.
10:46We have no electricity.
10:53We have no place to stay.
10:56It's hard to talk about it, but the situation is very bad.
11:06Hassan's sea bream was served at seaside restaurants and hotels
11:09by the port in Gaza's most affluent neighborhood, Al-Rimal.
11:14The area was heavily bombarded at the start of the war,
11:18and then the Israeli military flattened large sections with bulldozers
11:22as part of their hunt for Hamas strongholds.
11:28Zones shaded in red were either damaged or destroyed.
11:34These include the portside Al-Hassani Mosque,
11:37one of the most famous in Gaza,
11:39Al-Azhar University and Al-Shifa Hospital,
11:42which Israel claimed was sheltering a Hamas command center.
11:47On October 27, 2023, a missile landed close to a Salam restaurant,
11:52one of Gaza's oldest,
11:54blowing out windows and collapsing the roof.
11:59It was a dark night.
12:01I couldn't sleep.
12:03I cried a lot.
12:05I was devastated.
12:13This restaurant has been in Mahmoud Abu Haseera's family for generations.
12:20He says his business suffered more than $5 million in damage.
12:26When we located Mahmoud,
12:28he had fled south to a camp in Al-Qarara.
12:32By that point, according to Gaza's health ministry,
12:35more than 40,000 Palestinians had been killed in the war.
12:40And the fight against Hamas continued.
12:44The war was not over yet.
12:47The war was not over yet.
12:50The war was not over yet.
12:52More than 40,000 Palestinians had been killed in the war.
12:55And the fighting seemed to be following him.
13:01Just as we were filming, a bomb landed a few miles away.
13:13He moved south to look for work,
13:16while his wife and young son remained in northern Gaza.
13:20But Israel has since blocked access,
13:23and he hasn't seen his family or his restaurant for months.
13:38His only connection to them is the unreliable cell phone network.
13:49Hello?
13:54Rebuilding has always been a feature of Gaza's history.
13:59This slice of strategic coast has been fought over for millennia.
14:04It was a major trading hub.
14:06Napoleon called it the outpost of Africa and the door to Asia.
14:11Pilgrims flocked to the region to visit the holy sites,
14:15and tourists were drawn to the beaches.
14:18Even Australian troops stationed in Gaza during World War II enjoyed the beach.
14:24News from Palestine.
14:26Wherever Australians go, there you will find a surf carnival,
14:29if it's humanly possible to have one.
14:31And it certainly seems possible at Gaza.
14:35Tourism has disappeared over the past decades.
14:39But there are still riches to be found here.
14:43Gaza and Israel both border the Levant Basin province,
14:47which holds a wealth of oil and gas reserves.
14:51Gaza Marine, a store of natural gas worth $4.5 billion,
14:56is recognized as being in Palestinian waters,
14:59just 20 miles off the coast of Gaza.
15:03It holds enough gas to supply electricity to the Strip for years.
15:09But since it was discovered in 2000,
15:12repeated conflicts have stalled negotiations,
15:15and Gazans have not been able to access this lucrative natural resource.
15:22More recently, Israel drew up plans for an artificial island
15:26three miles off Gaza's shore,
15:28with an airport, seaport, and power plant,
15:31designed to benefit both Israel and the Palestinians.
15:36Construction of an artificial island
15:38with a port and civilian infrastructure installations off the coast of Gaza
15:42will provide the Palestinians a humanitarian,
15:45economic, and transportation gateway to the world,
15:48without endangering Israel's security.
15:52But the project was shelved because of security concerns.
16:00The future is something that most Gazans can't imagine.
16:05The present and the daily search for food and water takes priority.
16:13Food and aid deliveries by land have often been blocked from entering Gaza.
16:21These images show long lines of trucks at a standstill in Egypt,
16:25waiting to cross the border while their cargo is left to rot.
16:31The U.S. looked at the coastline for a solution
16:34and constructed a temporary floating pier in Apron
16:38to deliver aid by sea,
16:40at a cost of more than $300 million.
16:44But as satellite images show, it was damaged by heavy seas.
16:49In the end, the pier was only operational for 20 days.
16:54Meanwhile, Gazans have been constantly on the move,
16:58trying to stay one step ahead of the fighting.
17:03The U.N. says that 9 out of 10 people in Gaza
17:06have been displaced at least once.
17:10A constantly shifting sea of improvised camps
17:13has sprawled across the Strip,
17:15with no running water or electricity.
17:19As yet, there are no official plans on the table for post-war Gaza.
17:26These images show a sci-fi vision of a Gaza of the future,
17:30with skyscrapers, rail lines and industrial zones rising from the ashes.
17:36The renderings were published in an Israeli newspaper in May 2024
17:41and attributed to Netanyahu,
17:43but no one has claimed responsibility for them.
17:48The U.N. says it will take 40 to 50 billion dollars and decades to rebuild Gaza,
17:55the biggest post-war reconstruction effort since World War II.
18:01Many Gazans say they fear the coastline they once knew,
18:05along with their businesses, is gone for good.
18:31The destruction I caused in Gaza,
18:33and the destruction I caused here,
18:35will continue for another two years.
18:37There is no end to it.
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