Israel’s military has transformed every bit of Gazan territory within about half a mile of the Israeli border into a wasteland.

Armored bulldozers have systematically leveled one home after another. Combat engineers have laid explosives and triggered controlled demolitions inside once-bustling factories. Troops have torn up and denied Palestinians any access to the fertile farmland that once sustained lives and livelihoods.

In its place, the Israeli military has established a roughly 1-kilometer-wide buffer zone (about 0.6 miles) from which it has banished Palestinians and killed or fired at those who do set foot within its unmarked perimeter – all of which it has never officially acknowledged.

These testimonies reveal Israeli military practices that arguably violate international humanitarian law and, in some cases are war crimes, according to international law experts.

When Sergeant 1st Class “A” arrived in the industrial zone of Gaza City’s Shujaiya neighborhood in December 2023, many of the warehouses and factories had already been destroyed. But others were still standing.

After initially deploying to Israeli communities along the Gaza border to shore up their defenses following Hamas’s October 7 attack, Sgt. “A” was sent to Shujaiya and tasked with protecting combat engineers as they bulldozed buildings and rigged others to explode.

The purpose of the destruction was quickly made clear to him and his fellow soldiers: Israel was enlarging the buffer zone separating Palestinians from Israeli communities along the Gaza border.

Before October 7, Israel restricted Palestinians from coming within 300 meters (around 980 feet) of the border fence. But after Hamas’s attack, Israel’s military brass soon put into motion a plan to expand that area to approximately 1 kilometer, establishing a clear line of sight through the expanded buffer zone by leveling territory ranging from 800m to 1.5 km from the border.

In testimony provided to Breaking the Silence, an Israeli watchdog group which vets and publishes military testimonials, multiple soldiers said they were told the mission was to dramatically expand the buffer zone, in order to prevent another border attack.

But international law experts say that justification likely fails to meet the bar of “military necessity” that must be met to justify the destruction of civilian property, likely putting Israel’s actions in violation of international humanitarian law.

“There needs to be a legitimate military objective and operational objective – and the only way to achieve it would be to destroy the civilian property. And so, at that scale, that’s simply not quite plausible,” said Janina Dill, co-director at Oxford University’s Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict.

Beyond potential violations of humanitarian law, the deliberate, widespread destruction of civilian property without a clear military necessity is a war crime, Dill said.

Lawrence Hill-Cawthorne, a professor of public international law at the University of Bristol, agreed there is a strong case that Israel’s widespread destruction of property is a war crime of wanton destruction, an accusation also leveled by Amnesty International and other human rights groups.

“(From) what I’ve seen so far – there’s no clear evidence of a military necessity, at least for the level of destruction that’s been caused by Israel,” Hill-Cawthorne said.

While the Israeli military has acknowledged destroying “terrorist infrastructure” in Gaza in order to improve security conditions for Israeli communities near the border, it has never publicly acknowledged a full-throated plan to destroy thousands of buildings to create a kilometer-wide buffer area inside the territory.

A Sergeant Major who was deployed to Khuza’a in southern Gaza, who also spoke to Breaking the Silence on condition of anonymity, said his brigade got its orders “from the division’s operations branch. It wasn’t some local intervention.” He and others also described the distribution of color-coded maps, marking varying levels of destruction so far achieved in the buffer zone.

The destruction in Khuza’a, which lies to the east of Khan Younis, is unmistakable in satellite imagery, with the destruction of hundreds of buildings cleaving a line marking the zone’s perimeter.

“Residential buildings, greenhouses, sheds, factories; you name it – it needs to be flat. That’s the order,” said the Sgt. Maj. in the 5^th infantry brigade who deployed to Khuza’a. “Except for that UNRWA school and that small water facility – for everything else, the directive was ‘nothing left.’”

The Israeli military has since destroyed more than 6,200 buildings in Gaza within 1 kilometer of the border, according to satellite analysis conducted by Corey Scher and Jamon Van Den Hoek, researchers at the City University of New York and Oregon State University.

Adi Ben-Nun, a researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said as of January, “all buildings in the buffer zone were demolished or heavily damaged.”

‘Kill zone’

For Palestinians, setting foot inside the buffer zone can be a death sentence.

Multiple soldiers described rules of engagement that authorized them to fire on Palestinians in the zone, regardless of whether they were armed or identified as combatants.

“The reservists also always raised questions over whether this was communicated to them (the Palestinians): ‘Do they know such a thing exists?’” the Sgt. 1st Class said.

He said commanders never provided a clear answer, but the reality was clear. “It’s not like they were told: The ridge before the border is (the line),” he said.

A Warrant Officer in the Armored Corps described Palestinians being shot for trying to pick khubeiza or mallow, an edible plant.

“People were incriminated for having bags in their hands,” the Warrant Officer told Breaking the Silence. “Guy showed up with a bag? Incriminated, terrorist. I believe they came to pick khubeiza, but (the army says), ‘No, they’re hiding.’ Boom.” He said a tank fired at them from about 800 meters, narrowly missing.

“A kill zone is in essence the announcement of a party to the war that they won’t take feasible precautions, that they won’t verify the status of an individual before attacking them. And that definitely violates international law,” said Dill, of Oxford University.

“Simply being present in a certain part of a combat theater does not amount to active participation in hostilities. And only active participation in hostilities makes a civilian lose their protection under international law.”

Hill-Cawthorne was equally unequivocal.

“A civilian does not lose their protected status, their immunity from attack merely because they enter an area that they’re not allowed or that they’re told not to enter,” Hill-Cawthorne said. “The only way in which people lose that immunity from attack is if they directly participate in hostilities.”

‘It was like paradise’

For 40 years, Abdul Aziz al-Nabahin grew olives, oranges and guavas on five acres of land he had inherited from his ancestors on the outskirts of Al-Bureij, in central Gaza – about 600 meters from the Israeli border.

His son Mahmoud recently married and had a 3-year-old daughter.

“It was like paradise,” al-Nabahin said. “We used to say, thank God. We were settled and satisfied.”

After being forced to flee earlier in the war, he returned to his farm during the January ceasefire only to find his home and farmland in ruins.

“We found the house destroyed. The trees were bulldozed,” he said. “We didn’t know where to sit, so we just stayed outside in the open.”

But he has lost so much more.

In late June, al-Nabahin said Mahmoud had gone to collect firewood near their home when he was killed. An Israeli tank shell struck him and his cousin, who was grievously injured but survived.

“The Israelis deliberately targeted them. They knew they were only collecting wood – not resisting or fighting. Just a cart with wood, clearly visible. Still, they were targeted,” al-Nabahin said.

“They kill anyone who goes there.”

When paramedic Hassan Hosni Al-Hila felt too sick to continue his late-night assignment with the Palestine Red Crescent Society on March 23, his son gladly agreed to cover his shift.

That shift would prove to be 21-year-old Mohammad’s last.

Within a few hours, while the young paramedic was dispatched with a convoy of emergency vehicles to find a missing ambulance crew in Rafah, southern Gaza, Mohammad called his father pleading for help amidst intense Israeli military gunfire.

“’Come to me, Dad, help me… we were targeted by the Israelis, and they are now shooting at us directly,” Al-Hila recalled his son telling him over the phone. “The call ended after that.”

His fate would remain unknown for over a week, until rescue teams granted permission by the Israeli military to access the area uncovered a horrific scene: a mass grave containing the bodies of 15 first responders buried along with their crushed emergency vehicles.

A growing trove of evidence detailing the final moments of the first responders has blown apart the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) initial narrative of what unfolded that day, in which it claimed without offering evidence that some vehicles were moving suspiciously without headlights or flashing lights toward the Israeli troops and that members of the emergency teams were militants.

“All the claims raised regarding the incident will be examined through the mechanism and presented in a detailed and thorough manner for a decision on how to handle the event,” the IDF said in a statement Monday.

According to an Israeli military official, troops from a brigade that had set up an ambush opened fire on the emergency crews that morning, after intelligence had deemed their movements “suspicious,” and believed they had successfully carried out an attack on Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants.

Family members and colleagues of the slain paramedics vehemently deny that any of the workers were militants and are calling for an independent investigation into the killings.

On seeing his son’s body, which Hosni said was riddled with bullet holes, he apologized for not being beside him in his final moments, saying their ambulances would have been dispatched together.

“I told him, ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t join you,’” Hosni recalls. “If I hadn’t returned home, [he] and I would have been together on the same mission.”

‘The gasp of death’

The chain of events began in the early hours of Sunday, March 23, following reports of an Israeli strike in Rafah. The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) dispatched an ambulance with three crew members to respond to the scene.

PRCS said they did not coordinate the dispatch with COGAT, the Israeli military agency overseeing activities in the Palestinian territories, because the area was not designated as a “red zone” where coordination is required. Hours after the attack, the IDF designated the area as a “red zone” as part of its expanded operation in Rafah.

According to PRCS medic Munther Abed – who was sitting in the back of the ambulance en route to the scene – the crew was suddenly targeted with heavy, direct gunfire by Israeli forces. Abed said he survived the attack by throwing himself to the floor of the vehicle for cover, hearing the pained yells of his colleagues in the front, both of whom were killed.

The ambulance crashed into a power pole, coming to a stop along with the gunfire, according to Abed. He said Israeli soldiers opened the back doors of the vehicle and detained him outside, stripping him down to his underwear.

An Israeli military official said the troops shot at a vehicle at 4 a.m., killing two individuals and detaining another, all of whom the IDF claimed without providing evidence were Hamas security officials. The official also denied that the vehicle was an ambulance or that the individuals were uniformed paramedics. Abed, who said he was released later that day from Israeli custody after the military checked his records, rejects those claims.

Once communication with Abed’s crew was lost, PRCS dispatched additional ambulances alongside Civil Defense vehicles to check on the missing team.

However, the support crews would meet the same, grim fate. A newly released video discovered on the phone of one of the 15 deceased ambulance and relief team members captured their final moments before being killed by the Israeli military.

The video is filmed from the front of a vehicle and shows a convoy of clearly marked ambulances moving along a road at dawn, with headlights and flashing emergency lights on.

The video shows the convoy stopping when it comes across another vehicle that had seemingly crashed into a power pole on the side of the road. Dr. Younis Al-Khatib, president of the PRCS, confirmed in a press briefing on Monday that the vehicle seen in the footage was one of the agency’s ambulances.

Two of the rescuers seen in the footage getting out of the vehicles are wearing reflective, PRCS emergency responder uniforms. A fire truck and an ambulance at the scene are marked with the PRCS insignia.

Almost immediately there is intense gunfire, which can be heard hitting the convoy. The video ends, but the audio continues for five minutes.

The paramedic filming the incident, identified by the PRCS as Rifaat Radwan, is heard repeatedly saying the “shahada,” which Muslims recite when facing death, and says he knows he is going to die.

At one point he says: “Forgive me mom, this is the path I chose – to help people – I swear I didn’t choose this path but to help people.”

The voices of others in the convoy can also be heard, as well as those of people shouting commands in Hebrew. It’s unclear who they are or what they are saying.

The call casts doubt over the timeline laid out by the Israeli soldiers involved in the attack, who said the rescue convoy arrived two hours after the initial ambulance, at 6 a.m., according to the Israeli military official. The video also shows the convoy arriving in darkness, with the first rays of sunlight visible on the horizon, indicating it was filmed before 6 a.m. – sunrise on March 23 in Gaza was at 5:42 a.m.

An IDF forward-operating base and staging area at an unfinished hospital in Tal al-Sultan, about 1 kilometer from the site of the mass grave, is visible in satellite imagery from Planet Labs. Ball said tracks from heavy vehicles can be seen between the base and grave site, adding that the military would have had a clear line of sight to where the bodies and vehicles were buried.

The IDF claimed on April 1 without offering proof that “following an initial assessment, it was determined that the forces had eliminated a Hamas military operative, Mohammad Amin Ibrahim Shubaki, who took part in the October 7 massacre, along with 8 other terrorists from Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.”

In a statement on Monday, the IDF revised that number, saying six Hamas operatives were identified among the casualties, without providing evidence.

The mass grave

Over the course of the next several days, PRCS and UN personnel negotiated permission from the Israeli military to visit the area on several occasions. It would be a week later that a convoy consisting of PRCS, Civil Defense, and UN OCHA crews unearthed the mass grave.

Some of the PRCS paramedics pictured in photos were buried in their uniforms emblazoned with the group’s emblem and reflective stripes. Others were still wearing their blue latex gloves, indicating that they were on duty and prepared to respond to distress calls. The bodies were mixed with mangled fragments of the crushed emergency vehicles, under mounds of sand, footage shared by UN OCHA of the exhumation shows.

“They were buried in their uniforms with their gloves on, they were ready to save lives, and they ended up in a mass grave,” Jonathan Whittall, the head of UN OCHA in the occupied Palestinian territories, said in a press briefing last week.

The deaths have sparked international condemnation, and the emergence of the footage prompted the IDF to re-investigate the killings.

According to the military official, troops from the Golani infantry brigade had set up an ambush along a road in the early hours of March 23, opening fire in two instances on vehicles arriving in the area.

Soldiers were told by drone operators that the vehicles in the convoy were advancing “in a suspicious manner,” the military official said, adding that soldiers involved in the attack claimed to investigators that they opened fire after being surprised by the convoy stopping on the side of the road and by individuals getting out of their vehicles quickly.

After seeing the bodies of more than a dozen uniformed emergency responders on the ground, the troops said they still believed they had successfully carried out the attack following efforts to verify the identities of some of the deceased, the military official said.

PRCS president Al-Khatib has demanded an independent investigation into the matter.

“We don’t trust any of the army investigations and this is why we were very clear in saying that we need an independent inquiry into this,” Al-Khatib said in a UN press conference.

First responders under attack

For Saleh Muammar – one of the PRCS paramedics killed and buried in the mass grave – this was not the first time he had been shot while on duty, according to his wife Hadeel.

“We bade him farewell every time he left, we expected that he would be martyred,” Hadeel said. “I felt that he would leave this world because the nature of his work is full of risks.”

International aid and humanitarian organizations have repeatedly condemned the Israeli military’s attacks on medical facilities and personnel.

More than 400 aid workers have been killed in Israeli attacks in the enclave since October 7, 2023, according to OCHA’s latest update released last week. The PRCS says the number of its staff killed in line of duty by Israeli forces in Gaza since October 2023 has now reached 27.

“The occupation’s targeting of Red Crescent medics … can only be considered a war crime punishable under international humanitarian law, which the occupation continues to violate before the eyes of the entire world,” PCRS said.