Israel’s Intensifies Displacement Campaign in Gaza

The consequences of Israel’s latest forced displacement campaign,masked as “evacuation orders”, in the Gaza Strip—along with its renewed ground assaults and ongoing intense aerial bombardments—are already catastrophic. This situation will undoubtedly compel hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to flee once more, forcing them to face homelessness yet again if the international community allows Israeli occupation forces toravage most homes, shelters, and structures in the area.

The Euro-Med Monitor field team observed Israeli occupation forces advancing on foot into western Beit Lahia on the evening of Thursday 20 March, accompanied by heavy artillery shelling and airstrikes during the night. This resulted in the forced relocation of thousands of people who were living in tents and run-down houses to areas devoid of the most basic necessities of life, where they were further bombarded and had no protection.

The Israeli occupation army also increased its violations in other regions of the Gaza Strip. In the last several hours, as of the time of publication, ithas conducted ground incursions into two areas of Rafah outside the “buffer zone” where its troops are positioned along the Egyptian border.Additionally, it has persisted in enforcing unlawful evacuation orders to drive out inhabitants of the northern Gaza Strip city of Beit Hanoun and towns east of Khan Yunis.

Due to a lack of transportation options, thousands of people in these areas were forced to leave their possessions behind and flee. After creating shabby, temporary shelters close to their destroyed homes over the 61 days following the ceasefire implemented on 19 January, they have once again been forced to experience the agony of being displaced somewhere new without shelter.

Israel began its most recent violent bombing campaign on Tuesday morning with the apparent intent to target population centres, shelters, displaced people’s tents, and inhabited homes,without any military justification or necessity. Its illegal ground incursions and evacuation orders have occurred at the same time as this campaign. Israel has been committing genocide against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip for nearly 18 months now, and its latest crimes are part of asystematic policy designed to impose harsh living conditions on the Strip’s residents that will ultimately result in their total annihilation.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said in a statement on Tuesday that he had directed the army to seize new areas of the Gaza Strip and evacuate residents southward, intensify air, sea, and land bombardments, and employ all available military and civil pressure methods, including carrying out President Trump’s plan to expel the Strip’s population.

“Take the advice of the President of the United States,” Katz said in a “final warning” last Wednesday. “Return the hostages and remove Hamas, and other options will open up for you—including the possibility of leaving for other places in the world for those who want to.”

Israel’s policies of starvation, mass destruction, and ongoing terror alone have unveiled a comprehensive plan to rid the enclave of its Palestinian population by driving Palestinians from their land through bombardment, deprivationof the basic necessities needed for survival, andthe blocking of aid that has resulted in a lack of means of subsistence. Katz’s public remarks, however, unequivocally demonstrate Israel’s declared intent to forcibly uproot Palestinians as part of its 17-month-long genocide. 

These remarks are not just threats; rather, they represent a reality that is being experienced on the ground as a result of widespread killings and the imposition of intolerable living conditions. The United States offers financial and military support for the continuation of Israeli crimes in the Gaza Strip, obstructs any international efforts to hold Israel accountable, and intervenes to prevent the issuance or implementation of United Nations resolutions that might curb these violations, providing political and military cover for these killings. As a result, the US is not only a collaborator, but is also a key player in Israel’s ongoing crime of genocide.

The most recent field reports state that in less than 72 hours, Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip have killed 591 Palestinians, including 120 women and more than 220 children, and injured over a thousand more people, some of whom arecurrently in critical condition.

The international community’s silence has allowed Israel to carry out its crimes, including killing and injuring people and attacking the headquarters ofinternational organisations and the UN within the Gaza Strip, without any deterrent. This is a serious breach of international law that was implemented to give UN headquarters and UNemployees extra protection—which is a crime in and of itself that needs to be taken seriously, and for which prompt punishment is necessary.

UN employee Marin Marinov was killed and five other foreign nationals were seriously injured in Israel’s bombing of the United Nations Office for Project Services staff residence in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, last Wednesday. Two of the victims were participants in the UN 2720 mechanism for Gaza, and three supported the UN Mine Action Service programme in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Notably, this was the second attack on the headquarters in just 12 hours; it had been hit by Israeli shelling the night before, with one shell striking the building’s roof in an attack that left no casualties.

Despite the obvious Israeli targeting and the type of shrapnel discovered at the headquarters, which experts for CNN determined were consistent with an Israeli M339 120mm tank shell, Israel’s denial of responsibility for this crime is just another example of its strategy of falsifying information in order to maintain impunity.

Israel’s refusal to take responsibility for this crime is not just dishonesty; rather, it is a calculated strategy that reflects its conviction that it can control the facts and avoid accountability without facing repercussions. Israel relies on its unrestricted political and diplomatic protection to carry out its violations in the absence of any meaningful investigations or true international accountability.

Israel continues not only to commit crimes but also to push the envelope, breaking every rule of international law because it knows that every transgression that goes unpunished opens the door for even more heinous acts. In the face of an international system that consistently fails to deter Israel and its allies in any way, the most horrific crimes and legal infractions have become routine and obvious, respectively.

In addition to being a disgraceful failure, the international community’s silence regarding Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip over the past nearly 18 months effectively gives Israel permission to commit further acts of genocide by resuming the mass killing of Palestinians. The systematic destruction of Palestinians’ means of subsistence is an obvious attempt to eradicate them entirely.

The systematic pattern of mass murder, continuous forced starvation, wilful deprivation of basic survival necessities, and the complete destruction of infrastructure in the Gaza Strip cannot be justified under any circumstances, regardless of the pretexts Israel may use. The core of Israel’s genocide in the Strip is the systematic policy to destroy Palestinian society and prevent it from existing as a viable entity, which is what these acts comprise—they are not isolated crimes.

Any attempt by Israel or its allies to disguise these crimes as security concerns or military requirements is nothing more than flagrant deception to hide the crime of genocide. Moreover, since these actions are being carried out with the obvious intent to exterminate the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip, these justifications do not alter the legal reality. The international community should not engage in any way with these excuses, and must act immediately to hold those responsible accountable and stop this genocide against the people of the Gaza Strip from continuing.

All states, both individually and collectively, should take up their legal obligations and act immediately to halt the genocide in the Strip by all means possible. In order to protect Palestinian civilians there, the international community must take all necessary steps to force Israel to lift the blockade completely and immediately, permit unrestricted movement of people and goods, open all crossings without arbitrary conditions, and take effective measures to protect Palestinians from forced displacement and slow killing. This includes launching an urgent response to appropriately meet the population’s immediate needs, including by providing adequate temporary housing.

Israel’s persistent and grave transgressions of international law necessitate the imposition of economic, diplomatic, and military sanctions by the international community. The financial assets of officials implicated in crimes against Palestinians must be frozen, military cooperationsuspended, and arms exports to Israel prohibited. Additionally, trade privileges and bilateral agreements that benefit Israel’s economy should be suspended in order to pressure Israel to stop its crimes against Palestinians.

States that aid Israel in committing these crimes, including the United States and other nations that give Israel support or assistance in any way, including aid and contractual relationships with itsmilitary, intelligence, political, legal, financial, media, and other areas that help its crimes continue, should be held accountable.

Arrest warrants and investigations by the International Criminal Court into Israeli officials involved in international crimes in the Gaza Strip must be expedited. To prevent Israeli officials from acting without consequence, Member States of the Rome Statute are required to cooperate fully with the Court and ensure that these arrest warrants are carried out.

CrossFireArabia

CrossFireArabia

Dr. Marwan Asmar holds a PhD from Leeds University and is a freelance writer specializing on the Middle East. He has worked as a journalist since the early 1990s in Jordan and the Gulf countries, and been widely published, including at Albawaba, Gulf News, Al Ghad, World Press Review and others.

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Hiding The Evidence: Israel Removes Mass Debris Via 100 Trucks Daily

Euromed stated that Israel is seeking to hide the evidence of genocide in Gaza Strip by removing the rubble and wreckage of destroyed buildings and the remains of missing persons underneath them through transport via 100 trucks daily.

In a press statement reported by the Sanad News Agency, Monday, the European-Mediternean human rights organization explained that the Israeli occupation is unilaterally carrying out a systematic operation to remove the rubble in areas under its military control and is transport it out of the Gaza Strip to obliterate evidence the criminal evidence it carried out in Gaza since 7 October, 2023.

Euromed,  officially named he Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, has indicated that initial estimates suggest Israel wants to remove about 10 million tons of rubble in the so-called Yellow Line areas which is under Israeli military control.

Euromed emphasized that its estimates that are 400 Israeli vehicles involved the removal of the rubble, besides the 100 trucks who are transporting the debris to unknown locations inside Israel.

It pointed out that the rubble that is being removed and transported focuses on sites where murders have taken places and where mass graves exist. It warned that “removing it separates physical evidence from its spatial context.”

Euromed added: The remains of some 8,500 missing persons are being crushed and mixed with rubble due to the use of crushers without forensic investigation. Meanwhile, the removed rubble contains property and essential building materials, and removing it without compensating its owners constitutes confiscation and looting, which is prohibited under international law.

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor called on the international community to intervene urgently, halt the rubble removal, and send international investigation teams to inspect and document the sites of destruction.

The amount of rubble and debris accumulated in the Gaza Strip by the first half of 2026 is estimated at approximately 60 million tons (other UN estimates put the figure at 68 million tons), following the complete or partial destruction of more than 80% of buildings and infrastructure.

Official statistics issued by the Government Media Office in Gaza indicate that more than 80% of buildings in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed or damaged, while the area is covered by approximately 60 to 70 million tons of rubble.

See Full Report Below:

The Israeli forces, along with Israeli civilian contractors, are conducting a wide and organised operation to process and clear the rubble from neighbourhoods and facilities they have destroyed in the Gaza Strip and relocate it from areas under their military control to outside the Strip.

This is occurring without any official record of the quantities removed or independent oversight, and before international and local investigative committees have had the chance to survey, examine, and document the sites. This risks destroying crucial evidence of genocide and the remains of victims still unaccounted for under the rubble.

These operations are not part of organised humanitarian efforts to rescue the missing, open roads, or prepare for reconstruction. Instead, Israel is acting unilaterally within closed areas under its military control by demolishing remaining buildings and then crushing, mixing, and transporting the rubble before forensic teams, evidence experts, and unexploded ordnance specialists can examine, document, and preserve the sites, along with the evidence and human remains.

The Gaza Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment, published jointly by the World Bank, the United Nations, and the European Union in April 2026, estimated that approximately 68 million tonnes of rubble are spread across the Gaza Strip, based on damage reports up to October 2025. This figure does not necessarily account for damage caused by later demolition and destruction operations.

According to its initial field data, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor estimates that at least 10 million tonnes of rubble have been removed, crushed, or moved from their original sites within the areas under Israel’s unlawful military control, which encompass about 66 per cent of the Gaza Strip.

Approximately 400 heavy pieces of excavation, demolition, crushing, and transport machinery, operated by Israeli civilian companies under military protection, are active across eastern and southern Gaza. They demolish remaining structures, crush rubble from destroyed neighbourhoods, and load the debris onto trucks for transportation away from the original sites.

In recent weeks, Euro-Med Monitor tracked nearly 100 Israeli trucks daily leaving the Gaza Strip with debris. These trucks carry rubble to undisclosed sites within Israel and further south of the occupied West Bank. The Israeli authorities have not provided details on the quantities removed, the routes taken, the destination sites, or how the material is utilised. They also have not permitted independent oversight of the sorting, weighing, or transport processes. This lack of transparency makes it very difficult to trace the transported material, identify evidence, or recover any human remains that might be present.

The systematic removal of rubble at this pace conceals the evidence of appalling crimes Israel committed in Gaza, especially those related to genocide, such as summary executions and killing unarmed civilians. These sites need careful examination and thorough criminal investigation before any intervention that might change or erase their features.

The debris scattered throughout the Gaza Strip includes possible locations of unlawful killings and bombings that targeted entire families, as well as sites believed to contain mass graves or bodies buried within destroyed homes, hospitals, shelters, and civilian facilities.

These sites hold evidence critical for identifying the weapon, attack sequence, victim and attacker positions, firing ranges, cause and manner of death, as well as fragments, projectiles, spent cartridges, biological traces, and personal belongings.

Crushing, mixing, and transporting rubble can erase evidence, location details, and connections within the crime scene. This process also disrupts the chain of custody, potentially making it impossible to trace where evidence was collected or to link it to a particular incident or victim. This damage cannot be reversed by aerial photographs or subsequent testimony, as investigating international crimes also requires tangible evidence that can be examined, compared, and legally verified.

These operations pose a direct risk to the remains of thousands of missing persons, estimated by Gaza’s Civil Defence to be around 8,500 in July 2026. Using crushers and heavy machinery without prior forensic and humanitarian surveys could crush or scatter the remains, mix them with rubble, and separate them from belongings and documents vital for victim identification. This process may also lead to transporting the remains to unknown locations that may become impossible to access later.

This conduct infringes on the families’ right to know the fate of their missing relatives and to recover and bury their remains with dignity. It also contradicts international standards that call for searching for the deceased, collecting and safeguarding information about them, and ensuring proper identification and recording. Additionally, removing sites before investigation breaches the guidelines outlined in the Minnesota Protocol on the Investigation of Potentially Unlawful Death. This protocol emphasises securing and documenting the scene, gathering evidence while preserving its chain of custody, and recovering and examining remains with scientific methods that uphold the victims’ dignity and their family’s rights.

The debris in the Gaza Strip comprises more than just rubble; it includes private and public property, essential building materials like steel, stone, and concrete that can be recycled and reused, as well as other valuable assets necessary for Palestinians to reconstruct their homes, roads, and infrastructure. It may also contain property documents, official records, and personal belongings that are part of individuals’ and families’ rights and memories.

Removing rubble from the Gaza Strip and commercially exploiting it without the owners’ consent or compensation may, depending on the circumstances and intent of the seizure, constitute unlawful confiscation or pillage. Such acts are prohibited under international humanitarian law, especially Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and the relevant provisions of the Rome Statute.

These actions are part of a broader pattern that has involved bulldozing sites believed to contain mass graves, storming and damaging hospitals and medical facilities after they were suspected of being sites of grave crimes, ongoing demolition of buildings in military-controlled zones, and targeting Palestinian journalists. Additionally, international investigators and independent media have been prevented from accessing the most heavily destroyed areas.

This deliberate removal of evidence occurs when the International Criminal Court (ICC) is still investigating crimes in Palestine, alongside other cases under universal jurisdiction in national courts. Destroying crime scenes before investigations are finished hampers legal accountability and complicates efforts by international investigators and prosecutors to establish facts, as vital evidence may be lost once removed from the Gaza Strip.

Moreover, Article 70(1)(c) of the Rome Statute considers “destroying, tampering with or interfering with the collection of evidence” as criminal acts that hinder the ICC’s justice mission when done deliberately. The ICC Prosecutor should investigate these actions as deliberate interference with evidence collection related to the ongoing investigation into the Situation in the State of Palestine, which also includes unlawful destruction, seizure, or pillage of property.

The large-scale crushing and removal of rubble not only destroys evidence but also erases land boundaries, house foundations, street networks, and neighbourhood features. This process strips Palestinians of the physical markers of ownership and their connection to the land, making it more difficult for them to return and rebuild their communities as they once were.

Transforming forcibly depopulated Palestinian towns and neighbourhoods into levelled, open spaces under Israeli control is a concrete act that deepens the displacement and ethnic cleansing. This process is inseparable from Israeli settler colonialism, which involves uprooting Palestinians, erasing signs of their presence, and redefining the land without them. This sets the stage for Israel’s efforts to re-establish settlements in Gaza and displace Palestinian residents, advancing a new phase of colonisation and the ongoing denial of land and the right of return.

The international community, including the Security Council, the UN General Assembly, and states parties to the Rome Statute, must urgently intervene to halt the systematic removal and transport of rubble from the Gaza Strip. They should also advocate for independent international forensic and criminal investigation teams to be granted access to assess and document the destruction sites before any further removal or transport occurs, ensuring that physical evidence is preserved to hold those responsible for genocide accountable.

Euro-Med Monitor urges the international community to push Israel to immediately and fully stop all rubble removal and transport activities. This includes requiring detailed disclosures of transported materials, weighing logs, truck routes, ultimate destinations, company and contractor names, beneficiary parties, payment information, machinery and truck registration numbers, and tracking data, as well as transparency regarding any sale, recycling, or commercial use of materials extracted from Gaza.

Furthermore, removing rubble or recyclable materials from the Gaza Strip should be prohibited until a transparent Palestinian and international system for managing these materials is put in place. This system should ensure that any unlawfully transported materials are either returned or their full value is compensated to the owners. Additionally, rubble suitable for reuse should be allocated to local reconstruction projects that benefit the Palestinian population and protect individual and public property rights.

States where the implicated companies or machinery manufacturers are based should mandate a halt to any actions that could lead to property demolition, evidence removal, or rubble seizure. They must also preserve all relevant contracts, correspondence, and operational data, and carry out independent investigations into the accountability of their directors and staff. Euro-Med Monitor urges targeted measures against individuals and companies found to have known about and taken part in these illegal activities, such as exclusion from public contracts, freezing assets, and criminal prosecution.

Any efforts to remove rubble or rebuild in the Gaza Strip must be led by Palestinians, involving local residents, property owners, and families of the missing. These initiatives should ensure the protection of evidence, recovery of remains, clearance of unexploded ordnance, sorting of hazardous materials, local reuse of rubble, preservation of property maps and urban fabric, and prevent reconstruction from being used to cement control or alter the enclave’s geographic or demographic makeup.

Euro-Med Monitor affirms that a ceasefire or political agreements do not erase crimes or their evidence. Reconstruction and rubble removal should happen alongside preserving evidence, discovering the fate of the missing, recovering property, holding perpetrators accountable, and ensuring victims’ rights to truth, justice, and reparation.

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Israeli Bullet Rips a Child’s Hand in a Gaza Classroom

CROSSFIREARABIA – A bulled fired by an Israeli soldier pierced through the hand of a pupil in-the-sixth grade and lodged into his wrist. The incident occurred on Monday while the pupil was sitting in class in school in Gaza City according to the Education Ministry. It said the boys name was Khaled Al Ashram from Al Sawafir School in the west of Gaza City. “The bulled pierced the small hand of the child while he was sitting at a school desk holding his open,” a Ministry statement emphasized. In its statement the Ministry included a photo showing the hand of the child pierced by the bullet and covered in blood according to Anadolu.

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