Israeli soldiers have provided detailed testimonies describing extensive destruction and killings in Gaza to establish the so-called buffer zone along the border, according to a new report by the Israeli group Breaking the Silence.

The report compiles accounts from soldiers involved in enforcing the buffer zone plan.

The group said, “One of these missions was to create a ‘buffer zone’ inside Gaza, which in practice meant razing the area to the ground. Through widespread, deliberate destruction, the military laid the groundwork for future Israeli control of the area.”

The buffer zone, referred to by soldiers as “the perimeter”, reportedly stretches from Gaza’s northern coast to the southern border with Egypt. It lies entirely within Gaza, beyond Israel’s internationally recognised borders.

According to the group, the previous buffer zone extended about 300 metres into Gaza.

The new zone ranges from 800 to 1,500 meters wide, affecting an area of roughly 55-58 square kilometers—around 16 percent of the besieged enclave’s land, including 35 percent of its agricultural area.

A major in the army’s Northern Gaza Division said, “What they (commanders) said in the operations room in November (2023) was that the war was expected to last a year, that we were going to conquer an area that would be cleared of everything.”

A non-commissioned officer from the Armoured Corps, discussing operations in January and February 2024, said troops were told there were no civilians in the area: “There is no civilian population. They are terrorists, all of them. There are no innocents.”

Describing their engagement orders, he said, “We go in, and if we identify suspects, we shoot them.”

He also detailed the destruction: “The ‘bear’, the D9 (armoured bulldozer), drives and mows down everything in its path. Essentially, everything gets mowed down, everything.”

When asked what that included, he replied, “Everything is everything.

Everything that’s built: orchards, cow sheds, chicken coops.”

He described the result as “Hiroshima. That’s what I’m saying, Hiroshima.”

A pile of rubble

Another soldier, a first sergeant in Reserve Battalion 5, said their main task in Khuza’ah, Khan Younis, between December 2023 and January 2024 was demolition: “I’m talking about up to hundreds of structure units; the destruction is total.”

He explained that the Gaza Division mapped destruction zones using colours: “Green means more than 80 percent of buildings were taken down—residential buildings, greenhouses, sheds, factories—it needs to be flat.”

A first sergeant in the Combat Engineering Corps who served in northern Gaza in November 2023 said, “We take down houses, knock them down, so there’s absolutely nothing left, a pile of rubble.”

He described demolition assignments as daily tasks: “You get up in the morning, get the locations, every day, except if we run out of explosives.”

He said platoons could demolish 40-50 houses per week: “It was a matter of half an hour per house.”

A reserve artillery officer said commanders had wide discretion in targeting: “There is no system of accountability in general. Anyone who crosses a certain line, which we have defined, is considered a threat and is sentenced to death.”

The Israeli army resumed its assault on Gaza on March 18, killing nearly 1,400 people and wounding over 3,400 since then.