A Systematic Operation to Crush and Remove the Rubble.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor warned on Monday that Israeli forces, working with Israeli civilian companies, are carrying out a broad and systematic operation to crush the rubble of neighborhoods and structures destroyed in the Gaza Strip and transport it out of the areas under their military control and out of the Strip entirely, without any announced tally of the quantities removed or independent oversight, and before international and local investigative bodies have been allowed to examine, inspect, and document the sites. The monitor said the practice threatens to erase physical evidence of genocide and to destroy the remains of victims still missing beneath the rubble.
Roughly 400 Machines, 100 Trucks a Day, and 10 Million Tons of Debris.
According to the monitor, around 400 excavation, demolition, crushing, and transport vehicles operated by Israeli civilian companies under military protection are active across eastern and southern Gaza, tearing down what remains of standing buildings, crushing the rubble of destroyed neighborhoods, and hauling it away from its original location. In recent weeks, the monitor recorded roughly 100 Israeli trucks a day moving rubble out of the Gaza Strip, as part of an effort to crush an estimated 10 million tons of debris — an operation the monitor said risks crushing the remains of some 8,500 people still listed as missing.
Erasing Crime Scenes, Land Boundaries, and Calls for International Intervention.
The monitor stressed that removing rubble at this pace and in this systematic manner conceals evidence of atrocities committed by Israel in Gaza in the context of genocide, particularly crimes linked to field executions and extrajudicial killings of unarmed civilians — sites that it said require on-the-ground inspection and rigorous criminal investigation before any intervention that removes or alters their features. It noted that the rubble spread across Gaza includes potential sites of unlawful killings and strikes that targeted entire families, alongside locations suspected of containing mass graves or bodies buried inside homes, hospitals, shelters, and destroyed civilian facilities.
The monitor added that these rubble-removal operations extend beyond erasing evidence to erasing the very features of neighborhoods, land boundaries, and home foundations, stripping Palestinians of the physical proof of their ownership and connection to their land — creating conditions that entrench forced displacement and ethnic cleansing. It called on the international community, the UN Security Council, the General Assembly, and states party to the Rome Statute to take urgent action to halt the rubble removal and transport operations, and to allow independent, specialized international investigative teams to inspect and document the sites of destruction before any further removal takes place.