Israeli troops smoke shisha in front of huge demolitions in Gaza

Videos of multiple residential blocks being destroyed by huge explosions in the Gaza Strip have been shared on Facebook by Israeli soldiers.

The footage has been posted by members of 8219 Commando combat engineering battalion as they moved across the Palestinian territory, according to researchers at Bellingcat.  

One of the clips shows multiple demolitions of residential tower blocks next to Al-Quds Hospital in Tel al-Hawa, a neighbourhood in Gaza City.  

In another, two of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) soldiers lean against a balcony as a huge explosion behind them sends a thick cloud of grey smoke into the sky.  

The relaxed scene is also evident as the commandos smoke shisha and raise glasses in another elevated location as a detonation takes place.

The IDF maintained this week that ‘entire neighbourhoods’ in Gaza have been converted into ‘combat complexes’ for terrorist activity, including ambushes, firing points and booby-trapped houses.  

The demolitions followed the Hamas-led October 7 terror attacks, which claimed the lives of around 1,200 people and led to the seizure of 252 hostages, of whom 128 are still being held.

The UN said this week that Gaza’s Health Ministry has been able to fully identify 24,686 deaths out of more than 35,000 which the ministry says have taken place in the enclave.

Accounts of what the Bellingcat researchers describe as ‘systematic and widespread’ destruction of civilian housing and infrastructure have been termed as ‘domicide’ by the United Nation’s Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing.

Dr Andreas Krieg, of the School of Security Studies, King’s College London, told Metro.co.uk: ‘The Bellingcat investigation is highly credible.  

‘The data has been carefully triangulated to show the randomness with which the IDF has been using destructive force against buildings that have already been cleared from Hamas forces and do not constitute a valid military target. 

‘This report confirms the Israeli policy of blowing up and destroying any infrastructure that is either suspected of having hosted Hamas or has any link to the public service or administration of Gaza pre-7th October.

‘Israel has thereby destroyed critical infrastructure that is key to governing and administrating the territory.  

‘As these buildings do not pose a direct threat, have been cleared already and are essentially civilian in nature, these actions constitute a violation of the laws of armed conflict.

‘The effect is that the Gaza Strip is widely uninhabitable and ungovernable now.’ 

The battalion’s activities as it moved across Gaza were tracked by Bellingcat and investigation partners Scripps News through the soldiers’ Facebook posts and open-source tools. 

In November last year, a captain with the battalion wrote about finding rockets and a small drone used for ‘terrorist purposes’ in a parking lot at one location in Gaza City.  

But this did not explain the subsequent destruction of multiple residential blocks, according to Bellingcat, which used satellite and geo-located data to verify the imagery.  

The following month, the Al-Islah mosque and an adjacent building in central Gaza were destroyed, contrary to international humanitarian law giving religious buildings protected status, the report says.

An Instagram post depicting the demolition claimed that ‘every house, mosque and school has been used here for terror purposes’.  

Further demolitions were then carried out in the southern Palestinian town of Khuza’a, which lies close to the border with Israel, in the Khan Younis governorate, between December and January. 

The captain said in one Facebook post that ‘we’ve become addicted to explosions’ as the IDF bulldozed large areas and demolished buildings, possibly to create a buffer zone. 

The final tracked demolitions took place in Khan Younis, the governorate’s capital, with the soldier saying they had received more than 300 mines to use in the location. 

Another member of the 8219 battalion told Scripps News: ‘I think we are the unit, at least until we left, that blew up the most amount of houses in Gaza.’ 

The journalists found that soldiers did not always give explanations for the demolitions, although at other times they did provide reasons, including revenge for October 7.  

Religious justifications also appeared to creep in, with the captain saying in one post that using 400 mines to demolish a residential area was ‘in honour of the Shabbat’.  

‘IDF operatives, especially unprofessional reservists, are being placed in a hostile, high-stress environment amid a widespread campaign from the strategic and operational level that de-humanises Gazans and Palestinians,’ Dr Krieg said.

‘Strategic and operational leaders are on the record using de-humanising narratives and narratives of revenge with highly emotive and at times religious references.

‘It has created an enabling context for soldiers in which they feel comfortable destroying civilian infrastructure for fun or looting civilian dwellings.

‘All of these social media posts suggest a widespread disregard for the property and lives of Palestinians.’ 

Dr Krieg also identified the ongoing Israeli military operations in Rafah, where intense fighting has taken place in recent days, as escalating the risk to civilians. 

‘In Rafah especially we will expect a higher density of civilians on the battlefield than in other parts of Gaza making it more difficult to differentiate between civilians and combatants,’ he said.  

‘You need professional soldiers here who are willing to bear the operational burden to protect civilians.

‘Only when Israel starts to prioritize saving civilian lives over killing Hamas operatives has Israel a chance of winning this war.’ 

Professor Balakrishnan Rajagopal, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, said that the demolitions were relevant to the genocide case being brought against Israel by South Africa at the International Court of Justice.  

Prof Rajagopal told Bellingcat that the destruction supported the claim that Israel was in effect rendering Gaza uninhabitable, which could still be a crime against humanity even if intent was not established.  

In response to the report and Dr Krieg’s comments, the IDF said: ‘There is no IDF doctrine that aims [to cause] maximal damage to civilian infrastructure regardless of military necessity.

‘IDF actions are based on military necessity and with accordance to international law.’ 

The military wing told Metro.co.uk that ‘exceptional incidents’ during the war will be examined by the General Staff’s Fact-Finding and Assessment Mechanism, an expert, independent body.

The IDF said: ‘The IDF addresses exceptional incidents that deviate from the orders and expected values of IDF soldiers by examining such events and implementing command and disciplinary measures as necessary.

‘On October 7th, Hamas carried out a massacre in Israel, slaughtering over 1,200 Israelis and taking over 240 hostages into Gaza. The IDF is operating throughout the Gaza Strip to prevent Hamas activity threatening the citizens of Israel and takes various imperative actions that are needed in order to implement a defence plan that will provide improved security in southern Israel.

‘As has been well documented, Hamas and other terror organizations unlawfully embed their military assets in densely populated civilian areas. The IDF is locating and destroying terror infrastructures embedded, among other things, inside buildings, within these areas.  

‘In certain cases, entire neighbourhoods in the Gaza Strip are converted into combat complexes which are utilized for ambushes, housing command and control centers and weapon warehouses, combat tunnels, observation posts, firing positions, booby-trapped houses and for setting explosives in the streets.’ 

The UN’s under-secretary for humanitarian affairs, Martin Griffiths, told BBC Radio 4 Today that Palestinians face famine as stocks of food in Gaza dry up.

His warning came as the IDF continued limited operations in Rafah and shared a post on X showing that aid ‘is flowing into Gaza by land, sea and air’.

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