OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)
An Israeli human rights group said the Israeli army’s buffer zone in Gaza constitutes a war crime.
B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, said in a report issued on Saturday, Israel has begun working on establishing a buffer zone which will extend over more than 60 kilometers (37 miles) with a one kilometer width, by which “the area will be off limits to Palestinians – even those who lived or cultivated fields in it before the war.”
“To create the planned buffer zone, Israel is currently destroying almost everything in the area it has designated for it, including residential buildings, public structures such as schools, medical clinics and mosques, fields, groves and greenhouses,” B’Tselem’s report said.
B’Tselem quoted Israeli soldiers, who were in Gaza, as saying that “the demolitions are carried out to clear the way for a security zone rather than as a response to intelligence information or findings in the field.”
The rights watchdog also quoted a study by Adi Ben Nun of the Geography Department at the Hebrew University, who said, “By 17 January 2024, the Israeli military demolished 1,072 of 2,824 structures located a kilometer or less from the border, most of which were homes.”
For 141 days in a row, the Israeli occupation army has been waging a heinous bloody aggression on the Gaza Strip, with US and European support, bombing houses, hospitals, civilian facilities and infrastructure and destroying residential buildings and homes on top of its residents, in addition to preventing the entry of water, food, medicine, and fuel.
