An abandoned airport in Gaza once served as a symbol of peace. Now, its ruins remain frozen in time — take a look.
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The Yasser Arafat International Airport operated in Gaza for less than two years.
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By 2002, the airport was in ruins. Israel bombed the site's control tower, runway, and terminal.
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Today, crumbling buildings are all that's left of the airport.
In 1998, the Yasser Arafat International Airport in Gaza stood as a symbol of independence.
Just a few years later, the airport stood in ruins.
Today, violence in the region continues to escalate after Hamas militants broke through Israel's security fences on the Gaza border and launched coordinated surprise attacks. These attacks left at least 1,000 people dead and wounded thousands more. Hundreds of civilians and military personnel were also taken captive.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu formally declared war against Hamas, launching a counterattack that has killed at least 830 Palestinians and flattened entire neighborhoods in Gaza.
Take a look inside the Gaza airport's short-lived history.
Built in 1998, Yasser Arafat International Airport once stood as a symbol of sovereignty and peace for the Palestinians.
President Bill Clinton, whose administration was heavily involved in peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, attended the airport's opening and cut the ribbon at the inaugural ceremony, NPR reported.
The airport was built in Gaza's southern city of Rafah and served the approximately 1.1 million people living in the Gaza Strip in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
The population of Gaza has since doubled to 2.2 million, making the 141-square-mile area one of the most densely populated places in the world, Reuters reported.
Countries around the globe financed its construction.
Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Germany contributed funds towards the airport, which cost $86 million to build, NBC News reported.
The airport had a fleet of three planes, including a Boeing 727, but its operations were short-lived.
On October 7, 2000, flights were halted when the second Palestinian uprising, or intifada, broke out, Al Jazeera reported.
In 2001, Israel bombed the airport in response to Palestinian militant attacks on Israelis in the West Bank.
Even after flights no longer took off from the airport, it still employed around 450 people, BBC News reported in 2005.
Years later, Israel tightened its blockade of Gaza.
Locals scoured the airport, collected the site's remaining materials and recycling them for profit, when the price of construction materials skyrocketed under Israel's blockade, NPR reported.
Today, all that remains is a crumbling skeleton of the airport.
Remnants of the runway are littered with trash and debris.
A large missile hole can be spotted in a golden dome, which was once home to the VIP terminal.
The VIP lounge once featured Moroccan mosaics, crystal chandeliers, and a fountain, The New York Times reported.
The golden dome design was an homage to the Dome of the Rock Mosque in Jerusalem.
The Dome of the Rock, also known as al-Aqsa mosque and the Temple Mount, has long been a contested area with violent clashes. Israeli right-wing opposition leader Ariel Sharon's visit to the site in 2000 sparked the second intifada uprising, The Times of Israel reported.
Hamas cited Israeli settlers entering the al-Aqsa mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam and the holiest site in Judaism, as part of the reason for its large-scale attacks on Israel in October.
No planes have taken off from or landed at the airport for nearly 20 years, The Times of Israel reported.
Daifallah al-Akhras, the chief engineer of the airport, told The Times of Israel in 2018 that he wept on a visit to the abandoned airport.
"We built the airport to be the first symbol of sovereignty," he told the news outlet. "Now you don't see anything but destruction and ruin."
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