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Israel's announcement that 21 soldiers died in Gaza this week when they were attacked while rigging two buildings with explosives included an unexpected revelation – that the military is moving forward with a controversial plan to demolish a “buffer zone” along the Gaza border to create buildings in the area.
While officials had floated the idea several times, the Israel Defense Forces' comments on Tuesday were the first public confirmation that the strategy was being put into action.
“It is one of the additional efforts or security layers that will be implemented after October 7,” said Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and an IDF spokesman until earlier this month.
The United States has vocally opposed the creation of a buffer zone, saying there should be no permanent change to Palestinian territory. Human rights groups say the destruction of civilians' homes and farms could amount to war crimes.
The IDF said the soldiers killed Monday near the southern town of Khan Younis were part of a demolition team that was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, causing the explosives to detonate and bring down the two buildings above them.
“The armed forces removed structures and terrorist infrastructure” about 600 meters from the border fence, said IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari, to “create security conditions for the return of southern residents to their homes.”
IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi said the troops died “in the buffer zone between Israeli communities and Gaza.”
Before October 7, Israeli border guards enforced a 330-meter buffer zone around the length of the 36-mile fence, although Palestinians could farm in the area. Israeli officials now argue that lax enforcement of the zone allowed Hamas to breach the border fence on October 7.
How Hamas breached Israel's border defenses during the October 7 attack
In the months leading up to the attack, Israeli border forces reported seeing people approaching the barrier with maps and seemingly probing it for weaknesses.
The military declined to provide further details about the buffer zone, including the depth of the area to be cleared. “This is part of the imperative measures necessary to implement a defense plan that will ensure greater security in southern Israel,” the IDF said in a statement on Wednesday.
Conricus said he expects the zone to extend a little more than half a mile from the border – more than twice the size of the pre-war buffer zone. “In some areas it could be wider, in others it could be a little less,” he said.
According to Israeli broadcaster Channel 12, a total of 2,850 buildings once stood in the planned buffer zone, and the IDF has already destroyed around 1,100 buildings. The IDF declined to comment.
Israeli officials have been pushing for the creation of an expanded buffer zone since the start of the conflict – another militarized layer between the enclave and the kibbutzim that have been overrun by militants.
“At the end of this war, not only will Hamas no longer be in Gaza, but the territory of Gaza will also be smaller,” then-Foreign Minister Eli Cohen told Israeli Army Radio on October 18.
A few days later, Israeli Agriculture Minister Avi Töpfer, a former intelligence chief, said the plan was a “zone of fire” into which no Palestinians would be allowed to enter.
What videos and satellite images show
Videos have been circulating for months of what appear to be IDF troops carrying out controlled demolitions of buildings, some of them near the border.
In a video posted online on December 12 and confirmed by The Washington Post, Israeli soldiers can be heard shouting and clapping as a school is blown up in northern Gaza.
A video posted online in December 2023 shows Israeli soldiers cheering after explosives damaged a school in northern Gaza. (Video: X (formerly Twitter))
The school, which the IDF said was used as a Hamas outpost, was about a mile from the border fence. Satellite images from January 20 show damage to the school and surrounding buildings, particularly in the north and east.
Satellite © Planet Labs, January 20
Satellite © Planet Labs, January 20
Additional videos posted online in mid-January and confirmed by The Post show the destruction of several residential buildings in As Sureij, an agricultural area in Khan Younis about a kilometer from the fence. In one video, a drone rises above the rooftops and captures the moment when around ten buildings go up in smoke and flames. In another video, about 11 buildings are demolished at once. Satellite images from Planet Labs show that the buildings have been completely leveled.
A video released on January 19 shows explosions at residential buildings in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. (Video: X (formerly Twitter))
Satellite © Planet Labs, January 19th
Satellite © Planet Labs, January 19th
The IDF did not respond to questions from The Post about the videos or whether the destruction was related to the buffer zone.
The United States has consistently maintained that the size of the Palestinian territories should not be reduced following the current conflict.
“So if a proposed buffer zone were to be within the Gaza Strip, it would be a violation of that principle and something we oppose,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in December.
Israel has informed the United States that the buffer zone established in the Gaza Strip is only a temporary security shelter to eliminate Hamas firing positions near the border, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatic communications discuss.
During a visit to Nigeria on Tuesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States had expressed “our clear opposition to the forced relocation of people,” but added that it was “appropriate” to take security measures to allow Israelis to return their houses in the south.
“If transitional arrangements are needed to make this possible, that’s one thing,” he said. “But when it comes to the future permanent status of Gaza … we remain clear that we are not invading its territory.”
The IDF declined to comment on whether the buffer zone would be temporary.
Conricus said he expected it to be enforced as long as militant groups remained present in the Gaza Strip. IDF officials said the war against Hamas could last years.
Reaction from human rights activists
Videos of IDF soldiers blowing up large sections of buildings in Gaza were part of South Africa's recent lawsuit at the International Court of Justice in The Hague accusing Israel of genocide.
“The scale of destruction in Gaza, the mass attacks on family homes and civilians… make it clear that the genocidal intent is both understood and put into practice,” said South African lawyer Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, referring to a video showing 50 Buildings were destroyed in the eastern district of Shejaiya.
Israel has rejected what it called South Africa's “false and unfounded” claims and defended the demolitions as essential to dismantling Hamas' infrastructure.
“Civil property is protected by international humanitarian law,” said Basel al-Sourani, an advocacy representative at the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. “These houses are empty and there is no one in them. Why are they doing these explosions other than as part of their forced relocation plan?”
Israel's prewar buffer zone covered more than 40 percent of Gaza's farmland, Sourani said, and blocked farmers' access to their fields for over a decade. In 2006, a deal brokered by the International Red Cross allowed Palestinians to return to their country.
“What are we going to do now when we talk about this 1 kilometer buffer, and I'm sure it's more?” Sourani wondered. His family farm, which includes around 10,000 olive trees and is about a mile and a half from the border, has already been bulldozed, he said.
“Not a branch of an olive tree remains.”
Karen DeYoung and Jarrett Ley contributed to this report.