Satellite imagery shows erasure of southern Gaza as Israel expands control

Newly updated aerial maps expose the systematic destruction of cities, agriculture, and cemeteries across the besieged enclave.

Palestinian journalist Muhannad Qishta yearns to visit the graves of his sisters – Reem and Walaa – in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, but there is a problem: they no longer exist on a map.

The Sheikh Mohammed cemetery in the Maan area of Khan Younis has been wiped from the map, and replaced by the tents and armoured vehicles of an Israeli military outpost, according to recently updated satellite imagery added to Google Earth.

“Even the dead have not been spared from this war,” Qishta told Al Jazeera. “How will I feel if I go and find the place a desert, without my sisters’ graves to read a prayer over?”

The high-resolution pictures, captured on February 25, 2026, expose a landscape where entire neighbourhoods have been reduced to ash, and the surviving population is squeezed into suffocating encampments that spill onto the beaches of the Mediterranean Sea.

For Palestinians, the updated maps provide a devastating, wide-angle view of an ongoing genocide that has killed nearly 73,000 people.

According to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, Israeli forces have fully or partially destroyed 94 percent of Gaza’s cemeteries, transforming places of memory into military barracks.

The satellite imagery confirms that major residential centres have vanished, altering the geography of the Strip beyond recognition.

In Rafah, the crushing scale of destruction has rendered neighbourhoods indistinguishable from others. The Saudi neighbourhood in Tal as-Sultan – a sprawling 752-unit housing project – has been flattened into vast mounds of rubble.

US President Joe Biden initially drew a ‘red line’ over the invasion of Rafah in early 2024, but Israel went ahead with its brutal operation. Israel faced no consequences for its actions in Rafah, which has largely been flattened.

General views of southern Rafah now show a largely erased urban footprint, with only faint outlines of streets remaining amidst the debris.

To the far west, the Swedish village in Rafah has been systematically wiped from the map, transformed from a vibrant coastal community home to roughly 1,300 people, into a military zone. Founded in 1965 with international assistance to shelter Palestinian refugees, the village’s economic lifeblood was intimately tied to the Mediterranean Sea.

For decades, residents relied entirely on fishing, with dozens of local fishing boats operating from its shores. The village housed small beachfront commercial stalls, boat maintenance sheds,