Israel is conducting a large-scale operation to crush, mix, and transport millions of tonnes of rubble out of the Gaza Strip, according to human rights organizations and monitors.

This effort to reshape Gaza's urban landscape occurs alongside a devastating human toll, with at least 73,387 Palestinians—mostly children and women—killed since the conflict began in October 2023.

The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, in its report titled Gaza Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment, suggests that the rubble removal may be aimed at demographic engineering and erasing evidence of the ongoing genocide. The report estimates approximately 68 million tonnes of rubble remain across Gaza, largely due to the war.

Euro-Med Monitor further states that the large-scale crushing and removal of rubble destroys land boundaries, house foundations, and street networks, stripping Palestinians of physical markers of ownership and deepening ethnic cleansing in the region.

Samir al-Mana’ama, a lawyer with the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, told Al Jazeera that Israeli authorities seized about 70 percent of the eastern Gaza Strip during the war.

Additionally, Salha, a human rights representative, said, “Reports and human rights documentation state that the occupation completely or partially destroyed more than 93 percent of the cemeteries in the Gaza Strip. Neither stone, nor human beings, nor even the dead in their graves have been spared from the occupation.”

These developments highlight ongoing concerns about the humanitarian and legal implications of the conflict in Gaza.

Sources