Israel removing Rafah rubble, international intervention urgently needed to recover victims’ bodies
An Israeli bulldozer demolishes a house in Rafah. April 2025
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor writes on 9 January 2026:
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor calls for urgent international intervention to halt the crimes of widespread destruction and land levelling being carried out by the Israeli army in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, until specialised teams and the necessary equipment are allowed to recover the bodies of victims, identify them, and ensure their dignified burial.
The circulating plans to reshape the area under the name of the “Green City” in Rafah will be used to entrench the isolation of the population and forcibly concentrate them into military-controlled ghettos, thereby perpetuating their displacement from their original homes and imposing deadly living conditions that undermine the basic foundations of their survival.
Over recent days, Euro-Med Monitor’s team has documented the evacuation by the Israeli occupation army, alongside contractors operating under its authority, of the entire area under full Israeli control in Rafah, and the commencement of rubble removal and land levelling. The army confirmed in recent hours that no less than 70 per cent of rubble removal operations in the city have been completed.
Bulldozing and land levelling operations in Rafah are being carried out despite confirmed indications that hundreds of bodies remain beneath the rubble of destroyed buildings and in streets and agricultural fields, posing a serious risk of damaging human remains and erasing their locations before recovery and identification can take place.
Euro-Med Monitor had previously documented the bombing of homes while residents were inside them, and the targeting of civilians during attempts to flee, without medical teams or rescue crews being able to reach or recover them due to Israel’s complete military control over the city and the prevention of access. This has been compounded by the creation of an unsafe environment in Israeli-controlled areas through local armed groups established or activated by Israel, which further increased risks and effectively restricted any safe humanitarian access. As such, the ongoing rubble removal operations constitute a continuation of the obstruction of rescue efforts and significantly heighten the risk of erasing evidence related to the fate of the victims.
The use of heavy machinery to remove rubble and level land could fragment victims’ remains or mix them with debris, which may then be transported to unknown collection sites or landfills. This would effectively result in the loss of bodies, render their recovery and identification impossible, and constitute a serious violation of the sanctity of the dead and the rights of their families, while further complicating dignified burial procedures. There is an urgent need to allow the entry of search and rescue teams, along with forensic experts equipped with surveying tools and location-identification technologies, to ensure the recovery, documentation, identification, and dignified burial of victim
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 of Israeli military incursions, particularly in Rafah. Ignoring repeated calls to recover bodies and lay them to rest in accordance with human dignity is shameful and unacceptable, deepening the suffering of families of the missing and depriving them of their right to know the fate of their loved ones, to mourn, and to bury them.
The proposed establishment of a ‘Green City’ to house Palestinians forcibly transferred to an area under Israeli control, and under the authority of armed groups it has established, represents an extremely dangerous model of re-engineering both population and territory under direct Israeli military administration.