In Rafah, an eerily quiet hellscape with tunnels under children's bedrooms: Reporter’s notebook

RAFAH, Gaza Strip -- As we bumped over the wreckage of Rafah, we poked our heads above the sides of the armored truck. And we wondered at the force used to pulverize so much concrete and mash so many buildings.

After climbing down from the Israel Defense Forces vehicle in which this small group of reporters last week was being ferried into the Gaza Strip’s southernmost city, we were hustled to one of the holes in the ground where Hamas, the terrorist group that governs the enclave, sunk its billions and stored massive arsenals -- and hostages, according to Israeli officials.

Another hole led to a tunnel where the IDF said Hamas recently executed six hostages. It was straight down and could have been mistaken for a water well if it had not been built inside a children’s room in a first-floor apartment. The walls were blue and had been painted with a child-sized Mickey Mouse and Snow White, along with a large single English word: “LOVE.”

The IDF reckoned the hostages had been held there for weeks. One of the clues was the large sack of urine-filled bottles they found. Israel said it believes there are about 50 hostages still alive and hidden in the many miles of uncleared tunnels.

The IDF invited ABC News, along with a small group of journalists, to see those tunnels and the Philadelphi Corridor, a narrow strip of land along the Gaza-Egypt border.

It was hard to focus on the tunnels for the destruction. In many cases the walls of buildings are sheered clean off, and looking inside makes you feel voyeuristic. Inside, one can’t help but notice a toothbrush still in its holder in the bathroom, the pressed shirts on hangers with the closet door blasted open, the dusty teddy bear embracing a bouquet of rebar; reminders that while Hamas may have tunneled beneath these buildings preparing for war, above were homes, stores and schools where many thousands of ordinary Palestinian families lived their lives.

The visuals are so arresting they sap your hearing. Then you stand and listen: the ever-present drone, the far-off clanking of tank treads, the crunch of boots on broken masonry, tile and glass. There was the close-up chatter of M4 rifle fire, and the farther-off hammering of attack helicopters. We weren’t told what they were shooting at but were informed a Palestinian sniper had wounded a couple of soldiers in this very spot two days earlier.

International journalists are not allowed into Gaza without an IDF escort and movement for ABC News' local journalists there is hazardous. So far, 116 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza since the ongoing war between Hamas and Israel erupted on Oct. 7, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The only living creatures -- aside from IDF troops or journalists – that we saw in our three hours on the ground in Gaza were a single cat and a single dog. The latter fawned and whined at the soldiers who gave me some sausage to toss to him. God knows, I thought, what the dog had been scavenging to survive.

What you don’t hear: life. The IDF says it hasn’t seen civilians in the Rafah area we were visiting in over a month, aside from a single confused elderly man they steered in the direction of a “safer zone,” they said. The United Nations and other organizations say there is no safe place in Gaza, with the IDF having designated 83% of the war-torn territory a “no-go zone” or issuing evacuation orders for civilians there, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

More than 1,200 Israelis were killed during Hamas' surprise attack on Oct. 7, according to Israeli officials. Hamas took 251 hostages, 97 of whom are still unaccounted for, according to Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the wake of the attack vowed to "completely destroy" Hamas.

More than 41,000 people have been since been killed and over 95,000 have been injured by Israeli forces in Gaza, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Ministry of Health.

It’s eerie to be in a city without the engine that makes it: its people. It makes the experience impersonal-- less a place that was a home, and more like a massive dusty construction site. But hundreds of thousands of people lived here. Now they don’t live here, and “here” will never exist in the same way -- regardless of whether cease-fire negotiations prove successful and post-war planning fruitful. About 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people have been displaced at least once since the war broke out, according to OCHA.

During several embeds with the IDF in Gaza, one notices that in some places the IDF seems to have churned the territory back to the dunes from which it originated. That means it’s not only the buildings that have to be scraped away, the rubble removed. It’s not only the restoration of the homes that can be rebuilt and the construction of new apartment blocks.

The recovery will have to include a complete infrastructural overhaul, new roads, sewers, water, electricity, phone towers, new grid, transformers, everything.