One soldier said they’re directed to make the buffer zone look like the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
The Israeli military is now occupying over half of the land area of Gaza after having massively expanded the “buffer zone” spanning the entirety of Gaza’s border and systematically destroyed everything in it, as Israeli and U.S. officials are pushing a plan for the total ethnic cleansing of the besieged enclave.
The buffer zone, which Israel has forcibly evacuated of all Palestinians, now spans the entirety of the southern city of Rafah and huge swaths of the region that borders Israel and Egypt. Israeli forces have reportedly worked to double the size of the buffer zone just in recent weeks, as Israel has unilaterally ended the ceasefire and resumed its fierce bombardments.
The rapid expansion of Israel’s buffer zones is seemingly the latest phase of Israeli officials’ push for the forcible evacuation of all Palestinians from Gaza. Last month, Israeli security cabinet officials approved the plan for the wholesale evacuation of Gaza, in line with Trump’s plan to raze Gaza and empty it of Palestinians in order to build a luxury vacation destination on its ruins.
Israel has maintained a buffer zone in Gaza for decades, and began drastically expanding it amid the genocide. As of last May, it encompassed roughly 16 percent of Gaza’s land, according to Amnesty International, with Israeli forces destroying everything in the zone — including civilian infrastructure like schools, mosques and cemeteries, as well as agricultural land.
On Monday, Israeli group Breaking the Silence published a report finding, based on soldiers’ testimonies, that the destruction of everything in the buffer zone was systematic; the creation of the zone, it says, “in practice meant razing the area to the ground.”
The goal is to destroy everything “critical for the fabric of life in the Gaza Strip” and for reconstruction after the genocide, in service of Israel’s seeming wider goal of permanent occupation of the Strip. One soldier, a sergeant first class, said that a platoon of soldiers would raze between 40 to 50 houses a week.
“Residential buildings, greenhouses, sheds, factories; you name it — it needs to be flat. That’s the order,” one soldier said. Another, a first sergeant, stationed in north Gaza early in the genocide, said the idea is to “create a sterile strip” where there used to be farmland and groves.
Another soldier, a warrant officer also stationed in north Gaza, described their commands visually: When the army is done with the area, it should look like the aftermath of the atomic bombing of “Hiroshima. That’s what I’m saying, Hiroshima.” In other words, soldiers are aiming for complete and total devastation.
The report also reinforced previous findings that Israeli forces are told to treat any Palestinian in the Strip as a legitimate target, with no regard for whether or not they’re a civilian. Another sergeant first class said that their commands were, “If you detect a threat or something — you shoot,” with a “threat” being classified as any hot spot seen on thermal binoculars.
“Sometimes there’s a specific ID from the scouts or radar or whatever, and then there could be a specific target to shoot. But sometimes it’s like, I don’t know, we fired. What do you shoot at? Find something relevant and shoot at it,” another soldier said.
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