Israel using planned demolitions to flatten "large swathes" of buildings in Gaza

Israel has used controlled explosions and bulldozers to demolish thousands of civilian buildings across Gaza in recent weeks, a BBC investigation has found.

The broadcaster's open-source intelligence team, BBC Verify, analysed satellite imagery and video footage and found "large swathes" of buildings razed to the ground since Israel withdrew from a ceasefire with Hamas in March.

The journalists, together with researchers from Oregon State University's Conflict Ecology lab, identified footage of civilian infrastructure being demolished in 40 locations across the blockaded Palestinian territory, some as remote as seven kilometres from the Israeli border.

In a matter of weeks, the Israeli forces have levelled "entire towns and suburbs - once home to tens of thousands of people", BBC Verify said.

"Virtually every structure left standing" demolished in certain towns

Videos verified by the BBC show footage of buildings being demolished via controlled explosions, excavators and bulldozers, including a significant number that appeared to have remained standing in the wake of Israel's intensive bombing of the Gaza Strip.

Multiple legal experts told BBC Verify that Israel's demolition campaign could amount to a war crime under international humanitarian law.

Among the demolished structures is a school in the border city of Rafah, which was found to be among the worst-hit areas, and a cluster of tower blocks levelled by a controlled explosion in Qizan Abu Rashwan.

In this agricultural settlement, located seven kilometres from the Israeli border, "virtually every structure left standing has been demolished since 17 May", BBC Verify found.

In Khuza'a, where satellite footage showed much of the town still standing at the start of May, 1,200 buildings were demolished in a matter of weeks.

The BBC also identified "dozens" of job adverts in Israeli Facebook groups offering work for demolition contractors in Gaza since May.

The destruction of civilian infrastructure is illegal under the Geneva Convention "except under narrow conditions of absolute military operational necessity", human rights lawyers told BBC Verify.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) maintains that these conditions were met, claiming that the remaining structures could harbour terrorist assets, but did not comply with the BBC's request to provide specific justifications for the 40 areas where demolitions were documented.

Israel's most recent military campaign, in response to Hamas's 7 October attacks, has killed nearly 59,000 Palestinians in Gaza, using methods of warfare that several UN reports have found "consistent with the characteristics of genocide".

Top photo via Shutterstock shows buildings destroyed in Gaza.

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