Gaza Herald_Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has issued an urgent appeal to the international community to immediately intervene to halt the Israeli army’s large-scale destruction and land-levelling operations in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. These operations are being carried out while thousands of families remain unaware of the fate of their loved ones, many of whom are believed to be buried beneath the rubble of destroyed homes, streets, and agricultural land.
Euro-Med stresses that all demolition and rubble-removal activities must be suspended until specialised search-and-rescue teams, forensic experts, and the necessary technical equipment are granted access to Rafah. This is essential to recover victims’ bodies, identify them, document the circumstances of their deaths, and ensure dignified burials in accordance with international humanitarian standards.
Mass Rubble Removal While Victims Remain Buried
Over the past several days, Euro-Med Monitor’s field team has documented the complete evacuation of areas under full Israeli military control in Rafah, followed by the systematic removal of rubble and the levelling of land by the Israeli army and contractors operating under its authority. Israeli forces have confirmed that at least 70% of rubble removal operations in the city have already been completed.
These operations are being conducted despite credible and confirmed indications that hundreds of bodies remain trapped beneath collapsed buildings, in public roads, and in agricultural fields. Bulldozing and levelling in such conditions pose an extreme risk of damaging human remains, destroying identifying features, and erasing the precise locations of victims before recovery and documentation can occur.
Erasing Evidence and Obstructing Rescue Efforts
Euro-Med Monitor has previously documented repeated Israeli attacks on residential homes while families were still inside, as well as the targeting of civilians attempting to flee. In many cases, the wounded and killed were left unreachable due to Israel’s complete military control over Rafah and its systematic prevention of medical and rescue teams from entering the area.
This obstruction has been compounded by the creation of an unsafe and hostile environment within Israeli-controlled zones, including through local armed groups established or activated by Israel. These conditions have effectively eliminated any possibility of safe humanitarian access. As a result, the ongoing rubble-removal operations represent not only a continuation of these violations but also a grave escalation, as they significantly increase the risk of permanently erasing evidence of victims’ fate and the circumstances of their deaths.
Violation of the Sanctity of the Dead
The use of heavy machinery to clear rubble and level land risks fragmenting victims’ remains or mixing them with debris that may later be transported to unknown locations, dumping sites, or landfills. This would lead to the irreversible loss of bodies, making recovery and identification impossible.
Such actions constitute a serious violation of the sanctity of the dead and the rights of families to know the fate of their loved ones, to mourn them, and to bury them with dignity. They also undermine any future accountability efforts by destroying material evidence necessary for investigations into potential war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Euro-Med stresses the urgent need to allow the immediate entry of trained rescue teams and forensic experts equipped with advanced surveying tools and location-identification technologies to systematically search for, recover, document, and identify victims.
Thousands Still Missing Across Gaza
The number of missing persons in the Gaza Strip is estimated at approximately 8,000, including hundreds believed to have been killed and left beneath rubble or in areas subjected to Israeli military incursions, particularly in Rafah.
Ignoring repeated calls to recover bodies and provide dignified burials is described by Euro-Med as shameful and unacceptable. Such disregard deepens the suffering of families of the missing, depriving them of their right to know the truth, to grieve, and to perform burial rites in accordance with their cultural and religious traditions.
The “Green City”: A Dangerous Project of Forced Confinement
Euro-Med Monitor has warned that circulating plans to reshape parts of Rafah under the name of a so-called “Green City” are not humanitarian in nature. Instead, they represent an extremely dangerous scheme aimed at forcibly concentrating Palestinians into militarily controlled zones under Israeli authority.
This proposed “city” would isolate the population, restrict movement, and place civilians under the control of armed groups established or sanctioned by Israel. It would effectively transform the area into a population ghetto, particularly as it coincides with the physical erasure of Rafah and the denial of residents’ right to return to their original homes.
Such a project carries grave risks of permanently altering Gaza’s demographic and geographic landscape while institutionalising displacement as an irreversible reality.
International Crimes Under Humanitarian Law
Euro-Med Monitor asserts that the establishment of the so-called “Green City,” both in concept and as implemented on the ground, entrenches a comprehensive system of acts prohibited under international humanitarian law and rises to the level of international crimes.
These acts include the unlawful and forcible transfer of civilians, the severe deprivation of liberty through confinement in a closed and controlled area, and the prevention of return to original places of residence by converting them into closed military zones. The system would control entry, exit, residence, and daily life, resulting in unlawful detention on a mass scale.
This is accompanied by deliberate and discriminatory deprivation of fundamental rights, amounting to persecution, as well as extensive destruction of property without military necessity and ongoing violations of the dignity of the dead through the removal of rubble before bodies are recovered.
A Mechanism of Genocide by Other Means
Euro-Med Monitor warns that the “Green City” project functions as a complementary mechanism to the ongoing genocidal process in Gaza. By erasing Rafah, preventing return, and forcibly relocating the population into a security-managed isolation zone governed by permits, gates, and surveillance, Israel would transform mass destruction into a permanent condition.
This system would enable the foreseeable and systematic restriction of food, water, medicine, fuel, healthcare, movement, and employment, while enforcing forced dependence on aid controlled by the occupying power. Such conditions are calculated to accelerate health collapse, social breakdown, hunger, disease, and death, amounting to the deliberate imposition of life-threatening conditions intended to bring about the physical destruction of the population, in whole or in part.
Legal Obligations of the Occupying Power
Under international humanitarian law, the occupying power bears a direct and non-negotiable obligation to ensure immediate access for medical personnel and rescue teams, to search for and collect the dead, to prevent mutilation of bodies, and to preserve their dignity and identity.
Preventing or delaying body recovery, leaving remains under rubble, or subjecting them to foreseeable destruction through demolition and levelling machinery constitutes a grave breach of these obligations and demands international accountability.
Euro-Med’s Calls to the International Community
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor calls for an immediate halt to all rubble removal and land-levelling operations in Rafah and urges the establishment of a binding humanitarian and technical mechanism to systematically search for missing persons, recover bodies, and protect human remains. It further calls for the creation of an independent international oversight mechanism involving experts in forensic medicine, forensic engineering, and cemetery management to ensure transparency and integrity in recovery efforts. Euro-Med also demands a ban on transferring or disposing of rubble outside Rafah prior to the completion of comprehensive forensic surveys, alongside the designation of declared and secured debris collection sites and the prevention of unauthorised access. In addition, it urges urgent technical support for victim identification efforts, including the deployment of mobile DNA laboratories and the establishment of a unified database for missing persons in coordination with families and relevant medical authorities.
Euro-Med also urges the rejection of any “Green City” arrangements that involve forcible transfer, confinement, or security-based population control, describing such frameworks as unlawful, discriminatory, and destructive to Palestinian self-determination.
From Condemnation to Accountability
Finally, Euro-Med calls on states and influential international actors to move beyond statements of concern and fulfil their legal obligations by exerting tangible pressure to halt Israeli crimes against Palestinians. This includes suspending all military, security, logistical, and financial cooperation that may facilitate violations, imposing a comprehensive arms embargo, and banning the transfer of weapons, ammunition, financing, insurance, shipping, and related services used to sustain or entrench these crimes.
