An abandoned airport in Palestine once served as a symbol of peace. Now, its ruins remain frozen in time — take a look.

• The Yasser Arafat International Airport served Palestine's Gaza Strip for less than two years.
• By 2002, the airport was in ruins. Israel bombed the site's control tower, runway, and terminal.
• Today, crumbling buildings are all that's left of the airport. 

In 1998, the Yasser Arafat International Airport in Palestine stood as a symbol of independence. 

Today, it stands in ruins. 

Daifallah al-Akhras, the chief engineer of the airport, told The Times of Israel 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."

Take a look inside the airport's short-lived history.

The Yasser Arafat International Airport was more than just an airport. According to Travel and Leisure, it stood as a symbol of sovereignty and peace for the Palestinians.

Source: Travel and Leisure

Opened in 1998, the airport was built in Palestine's southern city of Rafah and served the 1.8 million people of Gaza, according to NPR.

Source: NPR

Countries around the globe — Egypt, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Germany, and others — financed its creation, and then-US President Bill Clinton attended the airport's opening, NPR reported.

Source: NPR

But the airport's life was short-lived. On October 7, 2000, flights were halted, Al Jazeera reported. And when the second Palestinian uprising, or intifada, broke out, the airport was left in ruins.

Source: Al Jazeera

 

In 2001, Israel bombed the airport in response to Palestine's militant attacks on Israelis in the West Bank, NPR reported.

Source: NPR

Years later, Israel tightened its blockade of Gaza, and the price of construction materials skyrocketed, NPR reported. Locals scoured the airport, collected the site's remaining materials, and recycled it for profit.

Source: NPR

Today, all that remains is a crumbling skeleton of the airport.

Left behind are the tiles from mosaic walls designed by Moroccan architects in the 1990s, according to the Daily Mail.

Source: The Daily Mail

Remnants of a now-forgotten runway are littered with trash and debris.

A large missile hole can be spotted in a golden dome, which was once home to the former VIP terminal.

Today, the site remains quiet. No planes have taken off from or landed at the airport for nearly 20 years, The Times of Israel reported.

Source: The Times of Israel