This is what the disaster looks like - they were completely razed to the ground PHOTO/VIDEO

Satellite images show massive amounts of demolition in several areas where Israel&#39;s military command claims it has &quot;operational control&quot;.Huge parts were caused by planned demolitions, both of already damaged buildings and those that seemed mostly intact.Verified footage shows powerful explosions raising clouds of dust as the Israeli military carries out controlled demolitions of residential buildings, schools and key civilian infrastructure.Several legal experts told BBC Verify that Israel may have committed war crimes under the Geneva Convention, which generally prohibits the destruction of infrastructure by occupying forces.Establishing a &quot;humanitarian city&quot;A spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said they acted in accordance with international law; that Hamas has hidden &quot;military assets&quot; in civilian areas and that &quot;property destruction is carried out only when the imperative of military necessity requires it&quot;.In July, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz outlined plans to establish what he called a &quot;humanitarian city&quot; on the ruins of Rafah, with the original 600,000 Palestinians confined there.The plan was condemned by many. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the BBC that the proposal would be &quot;interpreted as being similar to a concentration camp&quot;.Tell al-Sultan was one of the liveliest neighborhoods in Rafah. Its densely populated streets were home to Rafa&#39;s only specialized maternity hospital and a care center for abandoned and orphaned children.Satellite images show that much of the area was already heavily damaged by Israeli bombardment and artillery fire, but dozens of buildings withstood the barrage.Destruction escalatedBut on July 13, the destruction escalated, when even the shells of damaged buildings were swept away, and entire blocks were razed to the ground. The hospital is one of a handful of buildings left standing.Similarly, demolitions are now underway in the nearby Saudi Quarter, once the site of the city&#39;s largest mosque and several schools.One verified video shows a tank driving down a street in Rafah while excavators work on the side of the road.Israeli demolitions are also visible in other areasIsraeli demolitions are also visible in other parts of the strip that seem to have managed to avoid heavy destruction during the early bombings.The agricultural town of Khuza&#39;a is located about 1.5 kilometers from the Israeli border. Israeli drone footage shows the utter annihilation of Khuza&rsquo;ah, east of Khan Yunis. Israeli bombs and bulldozers reduced the agricultural town to a ghostly wasteland. pic.twitter.com/QUUm70OsAR&mdash; Jehad Abusalim (@JehadAbusalim) May 30, 2025 Before the war, the town had a population of 11,000 and was known for its fertile arable land and crops such as tomatoes, wheat and olives.The IDF says 1,200 buildings have been demolished in Khuza&#39;a, which they claim were part of a &quot;terror infrastructure&quot; run by Hamas.A similar story emerged for the nearby town of Abbasan al-Kabir, where about 27,000 people lived before the war. Photos taken on May 31 and July 8 show that the widest area was wiped out in just 38 days. The brunt of the destruction has occurred in Bani Suheila and Abasan al-Kabira, where most of the buildings have been completely razed. Khuza&#39;a now completely razed. It appears that most of the destruction was done by bulldozers and the likehttps://t.co/xJ6KpACTX7 pic.twitter.com/XdZJHfjMyH&mdash; avi scharf (@avischarf) July 23, 2025 Israel created wide &quot;security zones&quot; and corridors separating parts of Gaza, and destroyed large numbers of buildings along and near those routes. Its newest corridor separates the western from the eastern Khan Yunis, between them Khuza&#39;a and Abbasan al-Kabiru.Also, since the early days of the war, analysts have suggested that Israel plans to create deep &quot;buffer zones&quot; by destroying buildings near the border, but some of the recently leveled areas are deep inside Gaza.In Kizan Abu Rashwan, an agricultural settlement about 7 kilometers from the Israeli border, virtually every building left standing was demolished after May 17. One video we verified shows a controlled explosion demolishing a group of residential buildings. The israelis blow up the historic castle towers in Qizan Rashwan as their assault on Gaza, a reign of destruction &amp; mass killing, intensifies pic.twitter.com/7NnNpEKb4l&mdash; Sarah Wilkinson (@swilkinsonbc) June 18, 2025 BBC Verify submitted to the IDF a list of the sites where they documented the demolitions and asked them to provide specific military justifications. They didn&#39;t do that.&quot;As has been widely documented, Hamas and other terrorist organizations hide military assets in densely populated civilian areas,&quot; an IDF spokesman said. &quot;The IDF is identifying and destroying terrorist infrastructure located, among other places, in buildings in these areas.&quot;War crime or...Several human rights lawyers spoken to by BBC Verify suggested the campaign could amount to war crimes.Ethan Diamond, a senior legal expert at the Diakonia Center for International Humanitarian Law in Jerusalem, said there was very little justification for this under the Fourth Geneva Convention, the document that generally covers the protection of civilians in wartime.&quot;International humanitarian law prohibits such controlled destruction of civilian property during armed conflict, except under the narrow conditions of absolute military operational necessity,&quot; Diamond said.&quot;Destruction of property due to concern or speculation about its future use (for example, that it will be used to launch an attack in the future) falls well outside this exception.&quot;Professor Janina Dill, co-director of the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict, said the occupying power must govern the region for the benefit of the population, which she says is &quot;incompatible with a military approach that simply renders the territory uninhabitable and leaves nothing standing&quot;.But some analysts tried to defend the IDF campaign.&quot;Many of the buildings demolished by the IDF have already been left in ruins by shelling and airstrikes,&quot; said Professor Eitan Shamir, director of the BESA Center for Strategic Studies in Israel and a former official at the Ministry of Strategic Affairs.He told BBC Verify that this posed a security risk to civilians who would return, especially &quot;during the winter rains when they are more likely to collapse&quot;.Professor Shamir also alluded to tactical issues.&quot;That area is a battle zone,&quot; he said.&quot;Even when the IDF enters the building and clears it, once the Israelis leave, the terrorists often come back to plant bombs or hide in it to shoot at them.&quot;There are no signs of letting up the pace of demolition. Israeli media reported last week that the IDF had received dozens of D9 bulldozers from America, suspended under the Biden administration.BBC Verify has identified dozens of ads posted in Israeli Facebook groups offering jobs in Gaza for demolition contractors. Most of these posts have been shared since May.Many ads specifically name the areas of Gaza where work will be done, such as the &quot;Philadelphia Corridor&quot; and the &quot;Morag Axis&quot; - both areas under IDF control.When BBC Verify asked for a comment, one contractor replied: &quot;Go to hell, both you and Gaza&quot;.Analyst Adil Haq of Rutgers Law School suggested that the goal of the IDF&#39;s overthrow could be a desire to create a &quot;security zone&quot; that they could &quot;permanently control.&quot;Other analysts say the demolitions could clear the ground for the construction of a proposed &quot;humanitarian city&quot; in Rafah.The president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, Efraim Inbar, suggested that they may want to encourage Palestinians to leave the Strip entirely by &quot;increasing the strong desire to emigrate.&quot;Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier told a group of lawmakers in a closed-door meeting that was widely reported in Israeli media that the IDF was &quot;destroying more and more homes&quot; leaving Palestinians &quot;no place to return to.&quot; For the residents of Gaza, the destruction was a harrowing experience.Homes completely destroyedMoataz Youssef Ahmed Al-Absi from Tel al-Sultan said his home was wiped out.&quot;I had just moved into my own home a year before the war started and I was extremely happy with it, with great hope for the future. Now it is completely destroyed,&quot; he said.&quot;After I lost everything, I no longer have a home or a roof over my head.&quot;Before and afterCheck out videos and photos below that show Gaza before and Gaza today. #Gaza before and afterISRAEL DID THIS TO PALESTINE!ZIONISM IS EVIL!#GazaStarving #GazaHolocaust pic.twitter.com/AI1hQJ1RRl&mdash; سارة أردوغان.. تركيا 🇹🇷 (@sarahArdogn) July 23, 2025 Gaza before and after the Holocaust pic.twitter.com/e4BYE9XQbF&mdash; Joseph Muztich 🇺🇸 (@josephMuztich) July 22, 2025 Central Gaza before and after Israel&rsquo;s attacks.Zionism is a terror ideology.pic.twitter.com/uOedcdLg7D&mdash; ADAM (@AdameMedia) July 22, 2025

This is what the disaster looks like - they were completely razed to the ground PHOTO/VIDEO

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