AFTER THE BOMBS, DURING THE BOMBS

The invisible danger of Gaza

Families living among the rubble in Gaza - every ordinary gesture can conceal an invisible danger. © Mohammed Ibrahim / Unsplash Opening Out of pure curiosity. That's how it all started. I came across a video on Instagram: a Palestinian man was holding an unexploded missile, showing its markings on camera, “American-made”, fired by Israel. Around him, the bombing was still ongoing. I said to myself: this is pure madness. And immediately after, a question lodged itself in my head that I couldn't shake loose: how do you handle a situation like this? How do you make a territory safe before, during, and after a conflict? Curiosity drove me to dig, to search, to try to understand. The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, a Geneva-based organization with consultative status at the United Nations, estimates that over 85,000 tonnes of explosives have been dropped on Gaza since the beginning of the conflict, a figure some analysts project as high as 150,000 tonnes when accounting for the full duration of the war. For context: the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 were equivalent to roughly 35,000 tonnes of TNT combined. The destruction doesn't end with the explosions: the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has formally opened an investigation into chemical contamination of the soil and groundwater, documenting the presence of heavy metals and toxic substances in the rubble. Risks that, according to experts, persist for years after the fighting stops. But beyond the bombs that did explode, thinking back to that Instagram video; I found myself asking: what about all the ones that didn't? Who steps in? I went back to searching, back to work. I looked for organizations, institutions, people whose job it was to deal with this: work I imagined as obscure, technical, far from the spotlight. And I found MAG, the Mines Advisory Group — an organization that has been operating in situations like this for many years, across many corners of the world torn apart by war. I met MAG. I met Chiara Butti, who coordinates the project for Palestine while operating out of Amman, Jordan, because entering Gaza today is not possible, not even for those who simply want to make it safer. Chiara is Italian, like me. From our meeting, this piece was born. I called it necessary because it truly is: to understand what remains when the bombs stop falling, and what it takes to let life begin again.

Gaza, October 2025. © MAG When the war ends, the danger does not There is a phase of armed conflicts that rarely makes the headlines: the one in which the bombs have already stopped falling but continue to kill. It is the time of unexploded ordnance, buried under rubble, hidden in the ground, forgotten in courtyards. In Gaza, that time has already begun, even as the bombardments continue, because they are continuing even if no one talks about them anymore. MAG, Mines Advisory Group, is an international humanitarian organisation specialised precisely in this invisible phase. It helps communities survive the aftermath of war, reducing the risks posed by explosive hazards: landmines, unexploded bombs, abandoned grenades, rockets that never detonated. “Our role is both immediate and long-term,” explains Chiara Butti, MAG's Head of Mission for the Occupied Palestinian Territory. “We protect civilians now and, when conditions allow, we help make land, homes, services and infrastructure safe enough for people to return, move freely, and rebuild.”

A MAG worker talks with a resident among the ruins of Al-Nasr - Gaza, December 2025. © MAG Gaza is not a classic minefield There is a crucial difference between Gaza and many other contexts where humanitarian demining organisations operate. In Cambodia, Angola, Mozambique, mine contamination follows fairly predictable patterns: it follows known frontlines, strategic corridors, borders. It can be mapped, marked, avoided. Gaza is different. The threat does not come from deliberately laid mines, but from a storm of bombs and projectiles that fell on a densely populated territory. Aerial bombs, artillery shells, missiles, rockets, grenades; and a percentage of all these munitions that, for technical reasons, did not explode on impact. They ended up under the rubble. Waiting. "In a heavily bombed urban environment like Gaza, contamination is often scattered and layered into rubble and damaged infrastructure, which makes it harder to manage," says Butti. “Buildings collapse, debris shifts, and hazards can be hidden; even when the impact point of a missile is known, the unexploded item may not be visible or where people assume it is.”

An unexploded ordnance among vegetation - this type of find is common in post-conflict areas. © MAG How many unexploded ordnance are there? The honest answer is: we do not know for certain. And the uncertainty itself is part of the problem. The Israeli army has stated that there are approximately 2,500 aerial bombs that failed to detonate, relatively traceable objects, because launches are recorded. But this estimate covers only the largest bombs. It does not account for grenades, artillery shells, rockets, or improvised devices. “We expect there to be far more unexploded ordnance buried under the rubble,” says Butti. Statistical models based on explosive failure rates can generate indicative estimates, but these remain approximations until a systematic assessment is possible. And that systematic assessment is not possible right now. “The lack of certainty itself increases the risk,” Butti points out, “because people do not know what lies beneath the debris.”

An EORE session for children in a displacement camp - Central Area, December 2025. © MAG Risk education as the first line of defence In the absence of access for technical clearance operations, MAG has focused its response on what is possible right now: Explosive Ordnance Risk Education (EORE). Sessions with adults and children to explain how to recognise an ordnance item, why not to touch it, and where to report it. Since September 2024, MAG together with its local partner Save Youth Future Society has conducted more than 30,000 such sessions, reaching over half a million people, including more than 140,000 children. Women and girls account for more than 59% of participants. The approach has evolved over time. At first there were brief, urgent sessions designed to respond to the immediate threat. Gradually, the shift moved towards longer, integrated sessions combining safety messages with mental health and psychosocial support. More than 16,000 brochures and leaflets have also been distributed. “Risk education does not remove contamination,” Butti acknowledges, “but it can prevent tragedies by changing behaviour at the critical moments.”

Distribution of information materials to families on the move - Gaza, October 2025. © MAG The problem of access MAG would like to do more. It would like to bring its technical teams into Gaza to begin actual clearance operations. It cannot. “The main obstacle is that large-scale work requires conditions that are not yet in place: formal access and registration approvals from the Israeli authorities, the ability to move specialist staff in safely, and permission to bring in the tools and equipment needed to work in a heavily damaged environment.” The obstacles are multiple: security, bureaucracy, politics. “The point we want to emphasise,” says Butti, “is that clearance must be framed and enabled as a humanitarian operation, not a political or military one.” In the meantime, the United Nations through UNMAS (UN Mine Action Service) is operating as a de facto transitional authority for mine action in Gaza. But the absence of a systematic structure means that, to a large extent, the burden falls on civilians themselves.

An outdoor EORE session for children - Gaza, December 2025. © MAG

A MAG educator leads a session with a group of children - Gaza, January 2025. © MAG The strategic role of Amman MAG's regional headquarters is in Amman, Jordan. This is not a coincidence: the geographical proximity to the West Bank and Gaza allows for planning, training, developing materials and being ready to deploy rapidly when conditions allow. From Amman, MAG develops and updates educational content, provides technical guidance to partners, ensures quality of sessions, and supports digital risk education to reach people whose freedom of movement is restricted. When a ceasefire window opened, MAG was able to deploy a specialist to work with UNMAS. It is a signal of what could be possible on a larger scale.

A MAG deminer at work in southern Lebanon - clearance operations in a post-conflict territory. © MAG The generational risk What happens if the problem of unexploded ordnance in Gaza is not addressed in a structured way in the coming years, even after the fighting ends? “The greatest risk is a long aftershock of preventable deaths and life-changing injuries, especially among children, alongside a recovery that stalls because rebuilding and restoring services remains dangerous.” Families may return and rebuild in uncertainty. Daily life will carry hidden risks until new accidents make the danger visible again. “There is also the risk of generational trauma,” adds Butti. “If clearance does not take place after the war, people will live in a reality of 'always unsafe'.” The natural course after a conflict is to move from risk education to actual clearance. In Gaza, that path is still blocked at the first stage.

Families living among the rubble in Gaza - every ordinary gesture can conceal an invisible danger. © Mohammed Ibrahim / Unsplash What the headlines do not tell When the news moves on, the danger does not. Explosive ordnance turns ordinary acts, clearing a room, repairing a wall, playing outside, into potentially fatal moments. Recovery becomes a safety challenge before it becomes a reconstruction challenge. “The 'after the bombs' phase is where communities either regain safety and dignity, or remain trapped in invisible danger for years,” says Butti. “When the spotlight fades, the longest work has only just begun.”

An unexploded ordnance among vegetation - this type of find is common in post-conflict areas. © MAG Closing The spotlight today is pointing elsewhere. The wider conflict involving Israel, the United States and Iran is filling front pages, reshaping regional balances, generating new news cycles. Gaza is slipping into the background. So is the West Bank. But those lights cannot go out; not now, not yet. Gaza remains devastated by its contemporary history, in a way that makes it almost impossible to imagine a normal life. And yet Palestinians continue to demonstrate extraordinary resilience, a capacity to resist and remain that defies every logic of destruction. This is not rhetoric: it is what you see in the images of those returning to the rubble of their homes, building a tent where there was once a building, bringing their children to a risk education session under a tarpaulin. In this context, NGO’S should be allowed to enter, operate, and make safe what is necessary to guarantee respect for human life and international law, which exists, which is binding, and which has no exception clauses for the most complex emergencies. MAG, like dozens of other organisations, is ready. It has the teams, the expertise, the will. It is only waiting for permission to do its work. Too many organisations have been forced to abandon the field, to fall back on Amman, to manage from a distance what should be managed on the ground. This is a situation we should find unacceptable, and one we should keep talking about, with the same insistence we give to open fronts and diplomatic negotiations. Because this too is the conflict. This too is Gaza. CIRO SCUOTTO Notes Statements are attributed to Chiara Butti, MAG Head of Mission for the Occupied Palestinian Territory. MAG (Mines Advisory Group) — www.maginternational.org