{"id":306428,"date":"2025-04-08T06:40:24","date_gmt":"2025-04-08T06:40:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=306428"},"modified":"2025-04-10T06:09:41","modified_gmt":"2025-04-10T06:09:41","slug":"from-razing-rubble-to-blowing-up-homes-idf-soldiers-share-how-they-expanded-gaza-buffer-zone-in-new-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=306428","title":{"rendered":"From razing rubble to blowing up homes: IDF soldiers share how they expanded Gaza buffer zone in new report"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yasmine Hassan \u2013 CBC April 7, 2025<\/strong><\/h1>\n

A new report from Breaking the Silence<\/a> (BtS), an Israel-based NGO, has compiled testimony from soldiers who detail how\u00a0they razed plots of land\u00a0during the war\u00a0in\u00a0their mission to expand\u00a0the buffer zone between Gaza and Israel\u00a0deeper into the strip.<\/p>\n

BtS, which was\u00a0founded by\u00a0Israel Defence Forces veterans,\u00a0has released a report titled The Perimeter: Soldiers’ testimonies from the Gaza Buffer Zone 2023-2024<\/a>, containing information from interviews\u00a0with dozens of IDF soldiers who served in Gaza and participated in the expansion of the buffer zone, which the report refers to as the perimeter. CBC News was able to speak to one of those soldiers who provided details of the IDF’s\u00a0activities in the area that runs\u00a0north to south along the border.<\/p>\n

Since it was founded in 2004, BtS\u00a0has published reports based on more than\u00a01,400 accounts from\u00a0IDF soldiers based on their experiences while serving in\u00a0Gaza, the\u00a0West Bank and East Jerusalem since September 2000, in its\u00a0effort to “expose the public to the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territories” and “bring an end to the occupation.”<\/p>\n

In a statement to\u00a0CBC\u00a0News, BtS said the creation of the perimeter through “confiscation of land” will cause significant obstacles to reconstruction efforts in the Gaza Strip and “undermines its long-term sustainability.”\u00a0The organization says that statements by Israeli officials, including that the territory would “remain in Israeli hands” and that Palestinians would not be allowed to return, amount to what BtS calls “ethnic cleansing.”<\/p>\n

BtS is also calling on the Israeli\u00a0government to return to the negotiating table and seek a diplomatic solution to return the hostages and bring peace to the region.<\/p>\n

‘A future of no security’<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\n
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Israeli forces have\u00a0maintained a perimeter running\u00a0north to south along the border between Gaza and Israel since at least the early 2000s. In 2015,\u00a0the United Nations Humanitarian Agency OCHA noted that the buffer zone extended\u00a0300 metres into the strip<\/a>.\u00a0Palestinians generally have\u00a0not been\u00a0allowed within that distance of the fence separating the two regions.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Since Oct. 7, 2023 \u2014\u00a0when Hamas-led militants stormed across the Gaza-Israel border, killed over a thousand people and kidnapped 250, according to Israeli tallies\u00a0\u2014\u00a0the\u00a0perimeter has been expanded to at least one\u00a0kilometre into Gaza, according to IDF soldiers who told BtS about their involvement in the mission to extend it.\u00a0Though the report does not name the soldiers, it does give their ranks and the general areas and periods they served.<\/p>\n

One IDF soldier featured in the report, a warrant officer who served in northern Gaza between\u00a0January and February 2024, told BtS\u00a0that the\u00a0buffer zone would reach as far as\u00a01.5 kilometres\u00a0into\u00a0Gaza,\u00a0civilians would be banned and everything would be razed. When asked what the area would look like after they were through, they replied: “Hiroshima. That’s what I’m saying, Hiroshima.”<\/p>\n

“This is\u00a0a policy by the current Israeli government, which leads us to a future of no security,” Joel Carmel, the advocacy director at BtS, told CBC News in a\u00a0video call.<\/p>\n

Carmel says Israel’s ongoing\u00a0push to extend the\u00a0perimeter into Gaza during the war\u00a0means\u00a0the expanded zone where Palestinians are not allowed could\u00a0become a permanent fixture in post-war Gaza, and that Israel is choosing a future for Gaza where “no one can ever come back” to that area.<\/p>\n

Recent\u00a0media<\/a>\u00a0reports<\/a>, some citing Israeli humanitarian organization Gisha<\/a>,\u00a0have said that when Israel’s\u00a0expansion of the buffer zone is complete, it will encompass as much as 17 per cent of the Gaza Strip’s area.<\/p>\n

OCHA says 65 per cent\u00a0of the enclave<\/a> is now within “no-go” areas, under active displacement orders or both. Israel has not fully explained its long-term goals for the areas it is now seizing, though Gaza residents say they believe the aim is to permanently depopulate swaths of land, including some of Gaza’s last farmland and water infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Carmel\u00a0points to a statement<\/a> by Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen in October 2023 where he said that\u00a0“Gaza’s territory will shrink” after the war ends.<\/p>\n

CBC\u00a0News reached out to the IDF\u00a0and Israeli government officials for comment but did not hear back before publication.<\/p>\n

In their testimonies to BtS,\u00a0IDF soldiers who participated in the expansion\u00a0of the perimeter, detail\u00a0the destruction\u00a0left behind and how the perimeter’s\u00a0presence impacts both Palestinian and Israeli societies.<\/p>\n

Leaving Gaza as a ‘mound of rubble’<\/strong><\/h2>\n

One soldier who spoke to BtS\u00a0and CBC News\u00a0served as a sergeant first class in northern Gaza in November 2023. They\u00a0said that their\u00a0unit was\u00a0tasked with\u00a0<\/strong>blowing up dozens of\u00a0buildings in the perimeter during their tour in Gaza. Though CBC\u00a0confirmed the\u00a0identity of the sergeant, they spoke on the condition that their identity be kept confidential out of fear\u00a0for their security and livelihood.<\/p>\n

According to the sergeant, IDF soldiers were told in a briefing that the areas they were told to destroy\u00a0were near enough to\u00a0Israeli settlements and cities that they were a security threat and\u00a0had to be destroyed. The sergeant told CBC\u00a0that this was the first time the perimeter was mentioned during\u00a0their mission.<\/p>\n

They\u00a0began their tour in northern Gaza, an\u00a0area\u00a0that was already mostly rubble,\u00a0where they were tasked with razing abandoned\u00a0homes and buildings. Soon,\u00a0they said their mission\u00a0expanded to blowing up houses\u00a0in\u00a0southern Gaza, where they noted there\u00a0were\u00a0still signs of life. It was at this point,\u00a0the sergeant said, questions about the purpose of the mission began to grow in their mind.<\/p>\n

“The houses there were not nearly as destroyed as in the north,” the sergeant told CBC News over Zoom. “You see the signs of people’s lives were there, and their stuff.”<\/p>\n

The sergeant noted that the reservist\u00a0training they received didn’t cover how to blow up houses. Instead,\u00a0they\u00a0said,\u00a0they were taught how to blow up tunnel entrances and set\u00a0up\u00a0mines on bridges and in\u00a0fields.<\/p>\n

“Houses\u00a0\u2026 are not really something we trained for,” the sergeant\u00a0said.\u00a0“Even the commanders were kind of learning it as we were going.”<\/p>\n

The sergeant said that\u00a0when they left Gaza in December 2023,\u00a0it was a “mound of rubble.”<\/p>\n

‘Everything is destroyed’<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Bombed school building sheltering displaced Palastinians in Jabalia, northern Gaza. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

Professor Adi Ben-Nun of the Geography Information Systems department at the Hebrew University of\u00a0Jerusalem has been tracking the destruction in\u00a0Gaza and the expansion of the perimeter since the beginning of the war.<\/p>\n

He says that before Oct. 7, 2023, there were about 180,000 buildings in Gaza, based on United Nations estimations. He says 120,000 of those buildings\u00a0were destroyed before the ceasefire was broken in March. Data detailing\u00a0the destruction since then is not yet available.<\/p>\n

He says the agricultural land within the perimeter\u00a0contained about\u00a03,000 buildings, and that it has all\u00a0been “completely demolished.”<\/p>\n

“You must understand that it’s not only the building, it’s the roads, the electricity, the water structure, the sewage \u2026everything is destroyed,” he told CBC News during a video call, where he demonstrated the satellite imagery he\u00a0used to track the destruction.<\/p>\n

Using his computer, Ben-Nun toggled\u00a0between two satellite images\u00a0he\u00a0created using Google maps\u00a0\u2014\u00a0one showing the state of the perimeter before Oct. 7,\u00a0and the other after. The map from before shows\u00a0green patches of land and buildings. On the\u00a0map from after, the greyish-beige colour of war emerges;\u00a0tank tracks and destroyed buildings are all that can be seen.<\/p>\n

He says that based on this level of destruction, it would take generations for Gazans to rebuild what has been\u00a0lost.<\/p>\n

“Even if people are allowed to go back home,” Ben-Nun\u00a0said, “there is no home.”<\/p>\n

Source\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Israeli soldiers reveal how Netanyahu has ordered the demolition of everything in a one-kilometer strip between Gaza and Israel. Thereby creating a \u2018no-go\u2019 zone, which one IDF soldier described as looking like \u201cHiroshima\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":292734,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[118,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-306428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-7-10-gaza-war","category-Israel_Anti-Semitism_Zionism_and_US-UK_allies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=306428"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":306435,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306428\/revisions\/306435"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/292734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=306428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=306428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=306428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}