What value is peace if it permits killing, maiming, and the systematic destruction of a society’s infrastructure—particularly one supposedly no longer at war? That is the grim reality facing Gaza, where occupying Israeli forces continue to render the Strip increasingly uninhabitable for its Palestinian residents. The effect is cumulative and unmistakable: ensuring the land is vacated, whether through direct force or a coerced acquiescence that paves the way for eventual seizure.

A January 12 report by The New York Times found that Israel has razed more than 2,500 buildings in Gaza since the ceasefire with Hamas began on October 10, 2025. Most of these demolitions have occurred on the Israeli side of the demarcation line known as the Yellow Line. Yet the report also documents the destruction of buildings on the Hamas-controlled side. “The scale of ongoing destruction is stark,” the newspaper observed. “Across eastern Gaza, in areas under Israeli control, satellite imagery reveals that entire blocks have been erased since the cease-fire, as well as swaths of farmland and agricultural greenhouses.”

The Times quoted Gaza-based political analyst Mohammed Al-Astal, who offered a blunt assessment: “The Israeli military is destroying everything in front of it—homes, schools, factories, and streets. There’s no security justification for what it’s doing.” A former Israeli official largely concurred. “This is absolute destruction,” said Shaul Arieli, who commanded Israeli forces in Gaza during the 1990s. “It’s not selective; it’s everything.”

Under the thin cover of what can only be described as a cruel truce, Israel’s demolition campaign—according to the Palestinian National Initiative Movement—is designed to “deepen the humanitarian catastrophe and impose forced displacement and collective punishment on the people of Gaza.”

The justifications offered to The New York Times provide little reassurance. They rely heavily on a provision in President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan stating that “all military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapons production facilities, will be destroyed and not rebuilt.” An Israeli military official denied that the destruction lacked discrimination. In some cases, buildings collapsed after the IDF detonated explosives in tunnels beneath them.

The air force, the official said, had also struck structures deemed a threat to Israeli soldiers, including those adjacent to the Yellow Line. It was further acknowledged that demolitions had occurred on both sides of the line, though Israeli forces insisted they had not crossed it.

This pattern is hardly new. In November of last year, the BBC reported that “entire neighbourhoods controlled by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have been levelled in less than a month, apparently through demolitions.” The broadcaster’s Verify unit analyzed satellite imagery showing that “the destruction of buildings in Gaza by the Israeli military has been continuing on a huge scale.” Many of the demolished structures showed no signs of prior damage, particularly in eastern Khan Younis and around Abasan al-Kabira. Gardens, trees, and small orchards were also pulverized.

Such actions should, on their face, constitute violations of the ceasefire terms. Israeli officials—both current and former—disagreed. Eitan Shamir, former head of the National Security Doctrine Department, argued that the IDF had acted within the agreement, which he claimed did not apply to areas behind the Yellow Line. This elegant casuistry was echoed in the language of an IDF spokesperson, who stated that, under the agreement, “all terror infrastructure, including tunnels, is to be dismantled throughout Gaza. Israel is acting in response to threats, violations, and terror infrastructure.” How much destruction is permitted, it seems, depends on how expansively one defines “threat.”

In December, Al Jazeera’s Sanad fact-checking agency reached similar conclusions. “Satellite images showed the latest demolitions took place between November 5 and December 13, with most concentrated in the Shujayea and Tuffah neighbourhoods,” it reported. The images also revealed demolitions in Rafah and the levelling of agricultural facilities east of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.

The Fourth Geneva Convention explicitly prohibits an occupying power from destroying real or personal property belonging to private individuals, the state, or public and cooperative institutions, except when such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations (Article 53).

In an email to Al Jazeera in December, Rutgers Law School professor Adil Haque expressed skepticism that the IDF’s systematic destruction complied with the Convention. “With a general ceasefire in place, and only a few sporadic exchanges of fire, it is not plausible that such significant destruction of civilian property has been rendered absolutely necessary by military operations,” he wrote. Absolute necessity, Haque emphasized, must arise from combat itself or from direct preparations for combat.

Responding to the Times report, Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, captured the bleak reality with characteristic sharpness. “The so-called peace plan,” she wrote on social media, “is allowing Israel to ‘finish the job’: 450 killed; 2,500 structures destroyed; lifesaving aid blocked.” Less a peace plan, then, than a framework for ongoing, sanctioned violence—falling just short of open war.