"‘Render it unusable’: Israel’s mission of total urban destruction", 15 May 2025

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Over the course of the war, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office, the army had destroyed more than 50,000 housing units in Rafah — 90 percent of its residential neighborhoods. Now, the army proceeded to flatten Rafah’s remaining structures, turning the entire city into a buffer zone and cutting off Gaza’s only border crossing with Egypt.

“The official mission was to open a logistical route for maneuvering, but in practice, the bulldozers were simply destroying homes. The southeastern part of Rafah is completely destroyed...”

Y.’s testimony is consistent with those of 10 other soldiers...[and] also aligns with videos published by other soldiers, on-the-record and off-the-record statements from current and former senior officers, satellite image analysis, and reports by international organizations...

...it appears that most of the destruction in Gaza and southern Lebanon was not carried out from the air or during combat, but rather by Israeli bulldozers or explosives — premeditated and intentional acts...

“Non-operational” destruction, devoid of a direct military justification, began within the first months of the war...

Now, according to a visual analysis conducted by researcher Ariel Caine for Local Call and +972, over 73 percent of buildings in Rafah and its surroundings have been completely destroyed...

The main weapon in the army’s arsenal of destruction is Caterpillar’s D9 armored bulldozer, which has long been used to commit human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories. But soldiers who spoke to +972 and Local Call also described another favored method used to collapse entire residential blocks: filling containers or defunct military vehicles with explosive material, and detonating them remotely.

“In the end, the D9 [armored bulldozer] shaped the face of the war,” tweeted right-wing Israeli journalist Yinon Magal in early February. “It is what made the Gazans return south, after [they came north to their homes during the ceasefire and] they realized they had nowhere to return to … And this wasn’t a directive from the Chief of Staff or the General Staff — this was a policy of the ‘field,’ from division commanders, brigade commanders, battalion commanders, and even the military engineering teams who changed reality.”

A former senior security official in the Israeli military...confirmed that some commanders in the field have taken it upon themselves to order the destruction of as many buildings in Gaza as possible, even in the absence of any formal military directives from senior officers. “...They told me that D9 units were operating out of their control,” he told +972 and Local Call...

Meanwhile, multiple reservists testified that the army’s method of systematic and deliberate flattening of civilian infrastructure was also employed in southern Lebanon, during the October-November 2024 ground invasion...

Avraham Zarviv, a D9 operator who became known as the “Flattener of Jabalia” for the videos of destruction he uploaded to social media, explained his methods in an interview with Channel 14...

“We got on tractors, D9s, excavators… we learned the craft, we became highly professional. You don’t understand what it’s like to bring down a building — seven, six, five stories — one after the other.”...

Like other soldiers who spoke with +972 and Local Call, Yotam affirmed that the primary military objective in the second phase of the war in March and April 2024 was destruction for its own sake...

In April 2025, Israeli journalist Yaniv Kubovich entered the “Morag Axis” — the strip of land the army cleared between Khan Younis and Rafah — and reported seeing the remains of an old armored personnel carrier (APC) near one of the destroyed buildings.

Soldiers explained to him that this was another method used to collapse buildings — one that causes extensive damage to the surrounding environment. “The IDF loads [the APC] with explosives and sends [it] autonomously into a street or building that the air force would have previously bombed. But after a year and a half of war, the explosive APC became the cheaper alternative.”...

A., who served multiple tours in Gaza, told +972 and Local Call that this method isn’t limited to old APCs. “You take two giant containers, use dozens if not hundreds of liters of explosive material, and with a D9 or a Bobcat [small bulldozer], remotely controlled, place them at a predetermined point — and detonate. You take down an entire street in one blast...

“The goal was to prevent the residents from returning,” G. continued. “That was stated explicitly. The idea was that there would be no possibility of rebuilding after the war. In retrospect, we saw that they destroyed schools, mosques, and water purification facilities.”...