From razing rubble to blowing up homes: IDF soldiers share how they expanded Gaza buffer zone in new report
Breaking the Silence report details how perimeter around Gaza expanded at least 1 kilometre into the strip
A new report from Breaking the Silence (BtS), an Israel-based NGO, has compiled testimony from soldiers who detail how they razed plots of land during the war in their mission to expand the buffer zone between Gaza and Israel deeper into the strip.
BtS, which was founded by Israel Defence Forces veterans, has released a report titled The Perimeter: Soldiers' testimonies from the Gaza Buffer Zone 2023-2024, containing information from interviews with 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 activities in the area that runs north to south along the border.
Since it was founded in 2004, BtS has published reports based on more than 1,400 accounts from IDF soldiers based on their experiences while serving in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem since September 2000, in its effort to "expose the public to the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territories" and "bring an end to the occupation."
In a statement to CBC News, 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." The 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."
BtS is also calling on the Israeli government to return to the negotiating table and seek a diplomatic solution to return the hostages and bring peace to the region.
'A future of no security'
Israeli forces have maintained a perimeter running north to south along the border between Gaza and Israel since at least the early 2000s. In 2015, the United Nations Humanitarian Agency OCHA noted that the buffer zone extended 300 metres into the strip. Palestinians generally have not been allowed within that distance of the fence separating the two regions.
Since Oct. 7, 2023 — when Hamas-led militants stormed across the Gaza-Israel border, killed over a thousand people and kidnapped 250, according to Israeli tallies — the perimeter has been expanded to at least one kilometre into Gaza, according to IDF soldiers who told BtS about their involvement in the mission to extend it. Though the report does not name the soldiers, it does give their ranks and the general areas and periods they served.
One IDF soldier featured in the report, a warrant officer who served in northern Gaza between January and February 2024, told BtS that the buffer zone would reach as far as 1.5 kilometres into Gaza, civilians 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."
"This is a 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 video call.
Carmel says Israel's ongoing push to extend the perimeter into Gaza during the war means the expanded zone where Palestinians are not allowed could become 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.
Recent media reports, some citing Israeli humanitarian organization Gisha, have said that when Israel's expansion of the buffer zone is complete, it will encompass as much as 17 per cent of the Gaza Strip's area.
OCHA says 65 per cent of the enclave 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.
Carmel points to a statement by Israel's Foreign Minister Eli Cohen in October 2023 where he said that "Gaza's territory will shrink" after the war ends.
CBC News reached out to the IDF and Israeli government officials for comment but did not hear back before publication.
In their testimonies to BtS, IDF soldiers who participated in the expansion of the perimeter, detail the destruction left behind and how the perimeter's presence impacts both Palestinian and Israeli societies.
Leaving Gaza as a 'mound of rubble'
One soldier who spoke to BtS and CBC News served as a sergeant first class in northern Gaza in November 2023. They said that their unit was tasked with blowing up dozens of buildings in the perimeter during their tour in Gaza. Though CBC confirmed the identity of the sergeant, they spoke on the condition that their identity be kept confidential out of fear for their security and livelihood.
According to the sergeant, IDF soldiers were told in a briefing that the areas they were told to destroy were near enough to Israeli settlements and cities that they were a security threat and had to be destroyed. The sergeant told CBC that this was the first time the perimeter was mentioned during their mission.
They began their tour in northern Gaza, an area that was already mostly rubble, where they were tasked with razing abandoned homes and buildings. Soon, they said their mission expanded to blowing up houses in southern Gaza, where they noted there were still signs of life. It was at this point, the sergeant said, questions about the purpose of the mission began to grow in their mind.
"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."
The sergeant noted that the reservist training they received didn't cover how to blow up houses. Instead, they said, they were taught how to blow up tunnel entrances and set up mines on bridges and in fields.
"Houses … are not really something we trained for," the sergeant said. "Even the commanders were kind of learning it as we were going."
The sergeant said that when they left Gaza in December 2023, it was a "mound of rubble."
'Everything is destroyed'
Professor Adi Ben-Nun of the Geography Information Systems department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has been tracking the destruction in Gaza and the expansion of the perimeter since the beginning of the war.
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 were destroyed before the ceasefire was broken in March. Data detailing the destruction since then is not yet available.
He says the agricultural land within the perimeter contained about 3,000 buildings, and that it has all been "completely demolished."
"You must understand that it's not only the building, it's the roads, the electricity, the water structure, the sewage …everything is destroyed," he told CBC News during a video call, where he demonstrated the satellite imagery he used to track the destruction.
Using his computer, Ben-Nun toggled between two satellite images he created using Google maps — one showing the state of the perimeter before Oct. 7, and the other after. The map from before shows green patches of land and buildings. On the map from after, the greyish-beige colour of war emerges; tank tracks and destroyed buildings are all that can be seen.
He says that based on this level of destruction, it would take generations for Gazans to rebuild what has been lost.
"Even if people are allowed to go back home," Ben-Nun said, "there is no home."
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With files from Reuters