The report, from the Israeli rights group Breaking the Silence, cited soldiers who served in Gaza during the creation of the buffer zone, which was extended to between 800-1,500 metres inside the enclave by December 2024 and which has since been expanded further by Israeli troops.
Israel says the buffer zone encircling Gaza is needed to prevent a repeat of the October 7, 2023 attack by thousands of Hamas-led fighters and gunmen who poured across the previous 300 metre-deep buffer zone to assault a string of Israeli communities around the Gaza Strip.
The attack, which killed 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage, was one of the worst security disasters in Israel’s history.
“The borderline is a kill zone, a lower area, a lowland,” the report quotes a captain in the Armored Corps as saying. “We have a commanding view of it, and they do too.”
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report. The testimony came from soldiers who were serving in Gaza at the end of 2023, soon after Israeli troops entered the enclave, until early 2024. It did not cover the most recent operations to greatly enlarge the ground held by the military.