Riding in the back of an army jeep, we had to hold on tight as the convoy rattled along a bumpy and dusty road.
Tanks had carved deep crevices along the route while travelling through this area daily over the past two years.
We were just a few hundred metres from the Israel-Gaza border fence, having entered through a gate near the kibbutz of Nahal Oz, but we had entered a totally different universe.
There was a wasteland of mangled and crumpled buildings stretching as far as the eye could see.
The rumble of distant artillery fire and the constant buzzing of drones served as a reminder — as if one was needed — that it was still an active war zone, albeit one under a fragile ceasefire.
Just hours later, the relative peace would be shattered once more as Israel launched strikes across the strip in response to claimed violations of the truce by Hamas.
But as we drove towards the outskirts of Gaza City, there was an eerie calm. And almost no movement, apart from a few stray dogs wandering through the devastation.
Israel says it had to 'clean' the area
The Israeli military was taking a media contingent to the outskirts of Gaza City — the first time members of the press had been escorted into the strip since the peace deal brokered by the US president was announced.
The destination was the suburb of Shejaiya. The location still bears that name on a map, but there was almost nothing left.
Building after building had been destroyed. The roads and laneways that once ran between them were almost indistinguishable amidst the rubble.
The Israeli military said the scale of its bombardment was necessary to "clean" the area, the term used by a senior Israeli military official.
The claimed target was kilometres of underground tunnels, dug by Hamas in the direction of the Israeli border, and booby traps left behind by the terrorist group as its fighters fled.
But the scale of the destruction has fuelled criticism that the mission had seemed to have drifted far beyond that of removing Hamas's infrastructure, into a campaign of indiscriminate attacks killing civilians and militants alike.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has repeatedly rejected those accusations. And it did so again as it stood against that backdrop.
"A war is a difficult thing, it's a hard thing," Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani, the IDF's international spokesperson, told the ABC.
"This war began because of Hamas and wouldn't end because of Hamas."
Gaza City was the focus of the Israeli military's attention in the weeks prior to the truce being announced, with the IDF labelling it one of Hamas's final strongholds.
There was international condemnation of the mission to take control and occupy the strip, displacing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the process. The death toll continued to rise during the offensive.
Palestinian health authorities report that more than 68,000 people have been killed in the strip since October 2023, when the war began following Hamas's deadly attacks against Israel, which killed about 1,200 people. The militant group took a further 250 people hostage.
"The way this war is fought is because of Hamas's actions or Hamas tactics in this war," Lieutenant Colonel Shoshani said.
"We have done everything we can to prevent this war before this war, even to our detriment, and we have done everything we can during this war to make sure that we are allowing civilians to get out of harm's way."
Israel's conduct in Gaza has been labelled "genocide" by a number of organisations and a United Nations commission of inquiry — charges Israel has repeatedly rejected.
Beyond the Yellow Line
We could see where Israel halted its mission to occupy Gaza City days before the ceasefire was agreed to by Israel and Hamas. A line of buildings remains standing, seeming to show where advancing troops paused their advances.
Beyond that structural boundary is another — the so-called "Yellow Line" where Israeli forces withdrew to as part of the agreement with Hamas.
There had been confusion in the Palestinian community about exactly where that zone began, which prompted the IDF to place yellow concrete blocks to signify its limits.
The BBC had reported some of the blocks were placed hundreds of metres further into the territory Israel had ceded. But a senior military official insisted that was not the case.
"At the beginning, there was a kind of dispute about exactly where the Yellow Line will be held, but now it's very clear where we'll move … the blocks will represent the exact line," the official said.
The IDF estimates there are a few hundred Hamas fighters still hiding within the Yellow Line area, and up to about 1,000 civilians who they have cleared and are living inside the boundary.
Beyond the zone, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have flocked back to Gaza City since the fighting has calmed.
From the vantage point we were taken to, an advance base on the edge of Shejaiya, it was hard to imagine what they had returned to.
One hour in Gaza
The base was the same one senior US officials Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner visited days before the final remaining living Israeli hostages were freed.
It is a position Israel believes shows why its actions in Gaza have been justified.
Israel continues to control all access in and out of Gaza, including for the international media.
No press are allowed to independently enter the strip, except in tightly controlled and highly choreographed "embeds" managed by the military.
There was no interaction with the Palestinian population during the ABC's visit, and time on the ground was limited to about one hour.
The trip was no substitute for allowing the press free access to Gaza, which the international media has been demanding for the duration of the war and which is currently subject to a challenge in the Israeli Supreme Court.
It also does not substitute the work of brave and tireless Palestinian journalists who have had the burden of telling the story of the war, while foreign press have been locked out.
But for the time being, the "embed" was an opportunity to gain access to a place which has been partly shielded from view for more than two years.
A shaky ceasefire
The strikes launched on Tuesday night, local time, only fuelled fears about the fragility of the situation.
The United States has established a command centre roughly 40 kilometres from the gate we entered into Gaza to monitor the ceasefire.
The military officials on the ground during the media visit to Shejaiya insisted the presence of the American military was helping the ceasefire hold, rather than stymieing the IDF's independence to operate in the strip.
There was already talk of how some of the areas inside the Yellow Line would be the first to be redeveloped, with the Israeli military saying it was laying the ground work for things like utilities to be restored and rubble to be cleared.
"There are some places that are completely clear from Hamas and we are conducting these discussions with our allies in order to create these places as the first places of the demonstration how life could be here without Hamas, free from Hamas," an official said.
The scale of the destruction on the ground suggested that could still be a way off.
