Source: Amnesty International –
Israel’s unlawful and wanton destruction of civilian high-rise buildings continues to have devastating consequences for displaced Palestinian families in the occupied Gaza Strip, where reconstruction remains a distant dream amid ongoing genocide and air strikes despite the October 2025 so-called ceasefire, said Amnesty International today.
To illustrate the gravity of the wanton destruction that Israeli forces have wreaked on Gaza, Amnesty International today releases an investigation of the Israeli military’s levelling of at least 13 multi-storey residential and commercial buildings across Gaza City between September and October 2025. The organization found that the Israeli military severely damaged and destroyed the high-rise buildings, which housed thousands of people – many of them internally displaced – by dropping multiple bombs on each building after forcing residents to leave with almost no notice, and called them to be investigated as the war crimes of wanton destruction, collective punishment and direct attacks on civilian objects.
Statements by Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz in the immediate aftermath of some of the incidents of destruction offer further evidence that the buildings were not destroyed for reasons of imperative military necessity but rather to inflict collective punishment and widespread devastation on the civilian population as means of exerting political pressure on Hamas and as part of a mass forced displacement campaign.
“In the month preceding the so-called ceasefire in October 2025, Israel expanded and escalated its relentless assault on Gaza City, causing one of the worst waves of mass displacement during the genocide. A key pattern of this assault was the deliberate destruction, through aerial bombardment, of multi-storey civilian buildings, levelling the homes of thousands of civilians, and destroying makeshift camps in their vicinity. All the available evidence indicates that Israel’s destruction of these 13 high-rise buildings was not ‘rendered absolutely necessary by military operations’ and as such must be investigated as war crimes,” said Erika Guevara Rosas, Amnesty International’s Senior Director for Research, Advocacy, Policy and Campaigns.
All the available evidence indicates that Israel’s destruction of these 13 high-rise buildings was not ‘rendered absolutely necessary by military operations’
Erika Guevara Rosas, Amnesty International’s Senior Director for Research, Advocacy, Policy and Campaigns
“The destruction of these high-rise buildings in Gaza City is part of a broader pattern of relentless destruction of critical infrastructure, which, alongside repeated waves of mass displacement under inhumane conditions and the denial of life-saving humanitarian aid, had been key features of Israel’s genocide, amounting to the prohibited act of deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction, in whole or in part.”
Amnesty International interviewed 16 former residents and others displaced by the destruction as well as witnesses, and the organization’s Crisis Evidence Lab analysed satellite imagery and verified more than 25 videos to reveal a chilling pattern of deliberate destruction of the civilian structures by Israeli forces without requisite military necessity, as required by international humanitarian law. Amnesty International sent questions regarding the strikes and statements made to the Israeli defence ministry on 19 March 2026, but had not received a reply by the time of publication.
Amnesty International had previously documented a pattern of Israeli destruction of civilian areas between December 2023 and May 2024 without imperative military necessity during efforts to expand a “buffer zone” along the eastern perimeter of Gaza. The organization also verified through satellite imagery and video footage how Israeli forces completely razed what remained of the town of Khuza’a in southern Gaza over the course of two weeks in May 2025.
Since the so-called ceasefire in October 2025, Israeli forces have continued to carry out demolitions of homes and other buildings in areas over which they already exert full operational control east of the so-called “yellow line”. These are areas which Palestinians are prohibited from returning to and comprise more than 55% of Gaza’s total area. The boundaries of the “yellow line” are vague and constantly redrawn by the Israeli military.
“The impunity Israel has enjoyed in Gaza has given it free rein to repeat unlawful patterns elsewhere, most notably in Lebanon, where Israel’s defence minister invoked Gaza in his threats to accelerate the destruction of southern border villages. The Israeli military has already extensively destroyed thousands of civilian facilities, including homes, parks and football pitches across Lebanon,” said Erika Guevara Rosas.
The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits collective punishments as well as the destruction of property by the occupying power “except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations”. International humanitarian law also prohibits attacks targeting civilian objects. “Extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly” is a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and a war crime. Intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects and carrying out collective punishments also are war crimes.
“These demolitions did not just level concrete; they reduced to rubble the homes, lives and memories of their residents, turning to ruins and dust some of Gaza City’s most distinguished urban landmarks. For Palestinians not allowed to return to their homes east of the so-called yellow lines, despite setting up their tents in the closest point possible on the other side, the ongoing bulldozing of their homes and lands have become a daily painful soundscape to a life where the fire never really ceased,” said Erika Guevara Rosas.