Israeli soldiers occupy a house in Gaza, play house, smile, post it on TikTok, and then set it on fire. This video was circulating a few weeks ago on social networks, where also a few days ago an image of an Israeli brigade posing while doing the comb in front of a burning house appeared. The burning of homes in the Palestinian enclave, far from being a residual practice, obeys orders given directly by the commanders of the Israeli army as part of its ground operation in the strip, according to a Haaretz investigation.
Soldiers have destroyed several hundred buildings using this method over the past month. After setting fire to the structure along with everything inside, it is left to burn until it is unusable. Added to this practice is the destruction of multi-story buildings using explosives, including the Hamas government headquarters or a university campus.
Regarding the housing, an army source consulted by the Israeli newspaper assured that they decided the fate of the buildings based on intelligence information. As the war progresses, it is becoming a more common practice, say officers consulted in the investigation. They normally occupy the house first and when they leave it, they set it on fire. Some soldiers who had left a house behind wrote a note to the troops who came to replace them: “We are not going to burn the house so that you can enjoy it and when you leave you will know what to do,” said the note, which appeared in a photograph that one of the soldiers posted on the internet.
Israeli soldiers deployed in Gaza have openly published their behavior on social media. “Every day, a different platoon goes out to assault houses in the area,” one soldier wrote on social media, according to the investigation. “The houses are destroyed, occupied. Now what remains is to search them thoroughly. Inside the sofas. Behind the closets. Weapons, information, [tunnel] shafts and rocket launchers. We found all this. In the end, we burned the house, with everything in it,” he added.
A building fire means that its former tenants will no longer be able to live there. International law prohibits burning homes belonging to non-combatant civilians for the sole purpose of punishing them.
In addition to the burning of homes, bombs dropped by the Israeli army and fighting have totally or partially destroyed between 144,000 and 175,000 buildings throughout the Gaza Strip, representing between 50% and 61% of buildings in Gaza , according to analysis of satellite images by Corey Scher of the City University of New York and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University. 90% of Gaza’s population is displaced and more than a million are concentrated in Rafah.
