From razed rubble to blowing up houses: IDF soldiers share in new report how they expand Gaza buffer zone
A new report by Israel-based non-governmental organization Breaking Silence (BTS) has compiled testimony from soldiers, detailing how they razed the land during the war in order to expand the buffer zone between Gaza and Israel to further into striptease.
Founded by IDF veterans, BTS released a report titled The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The Buffer Zone 2023-2024, which contains information from interviews with dozens of IDF soldiers who served in Gaza and participated in the report expansion, and those soldiers would involve Perimeter. CBC News was able to talk to one of the soldiers who provided details of the IDF’s activity in areas traveling north to south on the border.
Since its inception in 2004, BTS has published reports since September 2000 based on their experience in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, based on their experience, based on their experience, based on their experience, based on their experience.
In a statement to CBC News, BTS said that creating the perimeter by “confiscating land” will be rebuilding efforts in the Gaza Strip and “destroy its long-term sustainability.” The group said the statements of Israeli officials, including the territory that will be “stayed in Israel’s hands” and that Palestinians are not allowed to return, which is what BTS calls “ethnic cleansing.”
The BTS also called on the Israeli government to return to the negotiation table and seek diplomatic solutions to return to the hostages and bring peace to the region.
“No safe future”
Israeli forces have maintained a perimeter that extends northward along the border between Gaza and Israel to the south since at least the early 2000s. In 2015, the UN humanitarian agency OCHA pointed out that the buffer zone extends 300 meters to the zone. Palestinians are not usually allowed within the fences that separate the two areas.
Since October 7, 2023 – According to Israelis, militants led by Hamas rushed into the Gaza-Israeli border, more than a thousand people were killed and 250 kidnapped – according to IDF soldiers, the periphery has expanded to at least one kilometer, extending toward the capped Za to Gaza. Although the report does not name the soldiers, it does provide the general area and period they serve.
A guarantee official in Gaza, Gaza between January and February 2024, told BTS that the buffer zone will reach 1.5 km and reach Gaza, civilians will be banned and everything will be razed. When asked about how the area looks like after passing by, they replied, “Hiroshima. That’s what I mean, Hiroshima.”
“This is a policy of the current Israeli government that leaves us without a safe future,” Joel Carmel, BTS’s advocacy director, told CBC News during a video call.
Carmel said Israel has been pushing for the expansion of the periphery to Gaza during the war, meaning that an expanded area that does not allow Palestinians can become a permanent fixture for post-war Gaza, and Israel is choosing a Gaza region for Gaza where “no one can return to the region”.
Recent media reports have quoted reports from Israel’s humanitarian group Gisha that when Israel’s expansion of the buffer zone is completed, it will include 17% of the Gaza Strip region.
Ocha said that 65% of the enclaves are located in the “no row” area under active displacement or both. Israel has not yet fully explained the long-term goals of the region it is now capturing, although Gaza residents say they believe the goal is to permanently reduce land, including some of Gaza’s last farmland and water infrastructure.
Carmel pointed out that Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said in October 2023 that after the war he said “Gaza territory will be reduced”.
CBC News contacted IDF and Israeli government officials for comment, but no response was made before publication.
In testimony to BTS, IDF soldiers participated in the peripheral expansion, detailing the destruction left behind and how the presence of the surrounding area affected Palestinian and Israeli societies.
Leaving Gaza as a “rubble mound”
A soldier who spoke with BTS and CBC News served as a sergeant in northern Gaza in November 2023. During their trip to Gaza, more than 100 buildings were blown up around. Although the CBC confirmed the identity of the sergeant, their speech was conditional on the fact that their identities were kept confidential due to fear of security and livelihoods.
According to the sergeant, the IDF soldiers were told that the area to be destroyed was close enough to Israeli settlements and cities that they were a security threat and had to be destroyed. The Sgt. told CBC that this was the first time that the perimeter was mentioned during the mission.
They began their tours in northern Gaza, which is already mostly rubble, where their mission is to razed abandoned houses and buildings. They quickly said their mission expanded to blowing up houses in southern Gaza, and they pointed out that there are still signs of life. It was at this point that questions about the purpose of the mission began to develop in their minds, the Sgt.
Sgt. told CBC News via Zoom. “You see signs of people’s lives and their stuff.”
The sergeant pointed out that the reserve training they received did not cover how to blow up a house. Instead, they were taught how to blow up tunnel entrances and build mines on bridges and fields, they said.
“Houses … are not something we train,” the sergeant said. “Even the commander is learning it.”
When they left Gaza in December 2023, it was a “mound of rubble.” The sergeant said.
Professor Adi Ben-nun said that through the report breaking the silence, “everything was destroyed”, which was created between Gaza and Israel.
“Everything is destroyed”
Professor Adi Ben-nun from the Department of Geographic Information Systems, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has been tracking the destruction in Gaza and its peripheral expansion since the beginning of the war.
He said that according to UN estimates, there will be about 180,000 buildings in Gaza by October 7, 2023. He said 120,000 buildings were destroyed before the ceasefire in March. Data detailed in detail since then has not been available.
He said there are about 3,000 buildings on the periphery of agricultural land and have been “completely demolished.”
“You have to understand that it’s not just buildings, electricity, water structures, sewage … everything is destroyed,” he told CBC News during a video call.
Ben-nun used his computer to switch between two satellite images he created using Google Maps – one showing the peripheral state before October 7 and the other showing the peripheral state. Previous maps showed green patches of land and buildings. On the map, the gray beige color of the war appears. Tank tracks and damaged buildings can be seen.
Based on this level of destruction, Gazans will need generations to rebuild the lost stuff, he said.
“Even if people are allowed to go home, there is no home,” Benning said.
