By Andrea Tucci,
In early April, just weeks after resuming its assault on Gaza, Israeli forces announced that they had taken control of the southernmost city of Rafah to create the “Morag Axis,” a new military corridor further dissecting the Strip. 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.
One of the Israeli soldier reported:we demolished 60 houses per day. Now the horizon is flat. There is no city.
It also aligns with videos published by Israeli soldiers, there was a strategic decision to “flatten the area,” to ensure that “the return of palestinian to these spaces is not something that will happen. Nowhere to return to.
These actions amount to clear violations of the laws of war, a war crime a specific extensive destruction of property not justified by military necessity.
It is the systematic destruction of Gaza’s urban space that is laying the groundwork for the ethnic cleansing of the Strip — referred to in Israeli political discourse as “implementing the Trump Plan.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu openly endorsed this vision in late March, soon after Israel resumed the war. “Hamas will lay down its weapons. Its leaders will be allowed to leave…. We will see to the general security of the Gaza Strip and allow the realization of the Trump plan for “voluntary migration,” Netanyahu affirmed. “This is the plan.
Just this week, Netanyahu said: We are destroying more and more homes — they have nowhere to return to,” h“The only expected result will be a desire for Gazans to emigrate outside the Strip.”
The main weapon in the army’s arsenal of home’s destruction is Caterpillar’s D9 armored bulldozer, which has long been used to commit human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories.
A D9 operator can destroy on average 50 buildings, there isn’t a place to go in Rafah, in Jabalia and Zarviv. An Israeli operator said “We will fight until victory, until settlement and We are here forever.”
This policy of systematic destruction, a tactic to prevent civilians from returning to their homes, was also implemented during Israel’s two-month ground invasion of southern Lebanon. That’s destruction had no military purpose.
“The goal was to prevent the residents from returning that there destroying everything, schools, hospitals, mosques, water purification facilities.”
This logic of mass destruction has also been applied in the West Bank, albeit on a smaller scale until now.
According to a UN OCHA report from March 2025, since the beginning of 2024, Israel has demolished 463 buildings in the West Bank as part of military activity, displacing nearly 40.000 Palestinians from the Jenin, Nur Shams, and Tulkarm camps as part of “Operation Iron Wall.
Total Destruction is no longer simply the byproduct of Israel’s military activity, is their main strategy whether it is in Gaza, Lebanon or West Bank. The total destruction of everything, complete annihilation; a place where one can no longer even hope to survive.
An unprecedented destruction, without water, food, or medicine , a total violation of international humanitarian law, annihilating everything that makes life possible, where the only reasonable conclusion is that of a genocidal intent.
Anyone who has spoken out against the Israeli government has been accused of antisemitism, among whom: Pope Francis Bergoglio, UN Secretary-General António Guterres, the governments of Spain, Ireland, and South Africa, as well as the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, all of whom have strongly called for respect for human rights and international law.
In the face of the indifference of the ‘democratic’ West, Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, along with more than 800 legal experts and human rights scholars, has been raising the alarm for over a year about this ongoing genocide, not only to save the lives of Palestinian civilians, but also because this horrific act threatens to unravel the democratic order, paving the way for new ‘lands’ ruled by the law of the strongest.
