Sultan’s Sultan / E EPA
It is one of the first reports in the first person of Israeli military since the beginning of the conflict. Soldiers not only report a “buffer zone”, but a “death zone.”
Israelite combatants tell what they were asked to destroy homes and agricultural land about 1km from the Israel-Palestina border to create a “Death Zone of huge proportions.”
The testimony is unprecedented-this is one of the first times the media has access to personal testimonies of Israeli military since October 2023. The Breaking Group The Silence has been created by Israeli veterans who want to tell the reality of military control over Palestinians. He interviewed 4 witnesses who corroborated the reports.
“This space It should not have cultures, structures or people. Almost all objects, infrastructure facilities and structures within the perimeter were demolished, ”reads the report. One of the witnesses compares this space to Hiroshimathe Japanese city destroyed by the atomic bomb in 1945.
And whoever passes in this area does not leave: the soldiers had orders to destroy Everything that wants it to be there. He was told to them to “Deliberate, methodically and systematically annihilating anything within the designated perimeter, including integer residential neighborhoods, public buildings, educational institutions, mosques and cemeteries, with very few exceptions. ”
“Places where people lived, cultivated, and established industries were transformed into a vast vacancies, a strip of land eradicated in their entirety,” explains the group.
According to the soldiers, this now desert ground extends along the border between Israel and Gaza, and houses the southeastern corner of the Enclave. According to the report, the area covers about 15% of the territory of Gaza, and 35% of its agricultural area.
The United Nations platform reveals on map the Gaza Zones controlled by Israel.
“Throw to kill”
According to the soldiers, the mentality that was inculted to them was that there are no civilians, only terrorists in that territory. “We began to receive missions that consisted basically of bursting houses or what was left of the houses,” reveals a sergeant. But The same applied to people.
In 2024, a sergeant says he was ordered to “Trifting to kill” against any male adult that entered the perimeter. As for women and children, it should “fire to get away.”
But a captain who operated in Gaza in November 2023 says that “The border is a death zone. Anyone who exceeds a particular line, which we define, is considered a threat and is condemned to death. ”
“We decided a line from which everyone is suspicious,” clarified another military man. But the Palestinians were not informed about what this line is.: “How do they know is a very good question. Already died or were injured enough people when crossing this line, That’s why they don’t approach her. ” Empirical knowledge?
Risk death due to hunger
According to the witnesses, the Palestinians, even after seeing their compatriots they were killed in this area, continued to return. This is because, the soldiers explain, they went looking for edible plants.
A hunger, stronger than fear, He led the inhabitants of Gaza to return “once and over after we fired at them,” the witness says.
“There was Hubeiza (Malva herb) because no one was approaching. People are hungry, so they come with bags to catch Hubeiza, I think,” reports a military man.
