The Washington Post has revealed in a lengthy investigation how Israel is carrying out large-scale demolitions and building military fortifications in residential areas in northern Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been forced to flee their homes, according to satellite images, videos and verified interviews.

The Israeli occupation army said that it launched an air and ground attack on October 5 in the northernmost parts of Gaza - Jabalia, Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun - to expel Hamas militants who had regrouped there and that the operation "will continue as long as necessary."

More than 100,000 Palestinians have been displaced from the affected areas over the past 11 weeks, according to the United Nations, leaving an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 people — less than an eighth of the pre-war population. Aid groups say barely any aid has reached the area since early October due to Israeli restrictions, and experts warn that famine may already be setting in in some places.

According to a Washington Post analysis of high-resolution satellite imagery, Israeli forces have demolished entire neighborhoods, erected military fortifications and built new roads, while clearing areas of Palestinians. Visual evidence shows that nearly half of the Jabaliya refugee camp was demolished or evacuated between October 14 and December 15, linking an existing road in the west to an expanded vehicle lane in the east — creating a military corridor stretching from the sea to the border fence with Israel. Analysts say the creation of this corridor, the clearing of land on either side of it and the construction of protected settlement outposts in a square shape, is similar to the Israeli military’s transformation of the Netzarim Corridor, a strategic Israeli military zone in central Gaza. While Israeli forces carved the Netzarim Corridor through a largely sparsely populated agricultural area, Israel’s operations in the north have been concentrated in dense urban neighborhoods — effectively destroying northern Palestinian cities. While the military has not offered any public explanation for its clearing and fortification activities in the north, analysts said the newly created axis could separate the far north from Gaza City, allowing Israel to create a buffer zone to isolate its southern communities that came under attack on October 7, 2023.

The Israeli military issued evacuation orders as the offensive developed, telling civilians to flee for their own safety, with no sense of when — or if — they would be allowed to return. Hamas’s demand that families be allowed to return north, beyond the Netzarim corridor, during any pause in the fighting remains a major sticking point in negotiations with Israel over a possible ceasefire and hostage release agreement.

The Israeli occupation army claims that it targets "military targets only" and that it "takes all possible measures to mitigate harm to civilians," including telling them to evacuate "areas of heavy fighting," according to the newspaper.

“As long as the counterterrorism operations continue, we will not allow the residents to return, because we know that the purpose of their return is simply to use them as human shields by the terrorists,” David Mancer, a spokesman for the Israeli prime minister’s office, told the newspaper this month. He denied that the operations were aimed at cutting off the north or expelling Palestinians.

As of December 1, a third of all buildings in the northern Gaza Strip have been destroyed since the start of the war – including more than 5,000 in Jabalia, more than 3,000 in Beit Lahia and more than 2,000 in Beit Hanoun, according to the latest data from the UN Satellite Centre. Sixty percent of the destruction in Jabalia refugee camp occurred between September 6 and December 1, the data showed, with demolitions and displacement continuing in the weeks that followed.

A satellite image taken on December 15 shows widespread destruction in Beit Lahia and Jabalia, with a market, mosque, shops and homes reduced to piles of concrete and dust. On December 4, the Israeli military forced 5,500 people sheltering in schools in Beit Lahia to flee south to Gaza City, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Earlier this month, former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon told local media in a series of interviews that the Israeli military was carrying out "ethnic cleansing" in northern Gaza. "Beit Lahia no longer exists, Beit Hanoun no longer exists, and now they are working on Jabaliya," he said.

In interviews conducted by phone and text message over several weeks, 10 residents of northern Gaza described to The Washington Post the widespread targeting of civilian neighborhoods by Israeli forces, dangerous mass evictions in which men and teenage boys were separated from women and children, and the mistreatment and arbitrary detention of some of those trying to flee. Their accounts were consistent with images and videos verified by The Washington Post of mass screenings and arrests, as well as attacks on civilians.

“In northern Gaza, there is nothing left to support life. Everything has been destroyed to force people out,” said Saeed Kilani, 41, a resident of Beit Lahia.

Residents of northern Gaza described the days following October 5 as “Judgment Day.”

The airstrikes and sniper attacks were relentless, said Mohammed Khadour, 30, a resident of Jabalia. “Those were the hardest days of the war,” he told the newspaper by phone.

Some 1.9 million people - about 90 percent of Gaza's population - had already been displaced over more than a year of fighting, most of them forced south during the chaotic early days of the war and prevented from returning home.

Now, those who survived the violence and deprivation in communities closest to the northern border with Israel are being systematically forced out, neighborhood by neighborhood, in one of the largest mass displacements since the start of the conflict. Residents unanimously told the newspaper that they had no intention of leaving and only fled when they felt certain they would die or be killed in their homes.

Khaddour said he feared he would be shot if he ventured outside. But the damaged apartment he was living in with his brother Muwaffaq and his two-year-old nephew offered little protection.

It is noteworthy that this was the third major operation by the Israeli army in Jabalia during the war that began on October 7, 2023, after Hamas militants invaded southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people, including at least 311 soldiers, and taking 250 hostages.

The Israeli war has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 107,000, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, most of them women and children.

In the first three weeks of the IDF’s new offensive in the north, more than 1,000 people were killed, the Health Ministry estimated, adding that this was probably an undercount with many bodies lying in the streets or buried under rubble. Gaza’s civil defense service said on October 23, 2024, that it could no longer operate safely there, leaving the area without ambulances or rescue workers.

Meanwhile, residents said, civilian homes and apartment buildings were repeatedly targeted by Israeli forces. Visual evidence verified by The Washington Post showed the aftermath of the strikes on people lining up for water and on schools where displaced families were sheltering.

The destruction, displacement and refusal to allow aid into the area resembles the “General’s Plan,” a siege proposal presented to the Israeli government by a former IDF commander, which calls for the army to take control of the north by starving out the civilian population and treating anyone who remains as a combatant.

While the Israeli military has not made any public statements about its plans to evacuate parts of northern Gaza, satellite imagery shows that it is significantly reshaping the geography of the border area through demolitions and fortifications — consistent with tactics it has used to create military buffer zones in other parts of the Strip, including the central Netzarim Corridor and the Philadelphi Corridor along the border with Egypt.

Data from the UN Satellite Centre for 1 December showed that 5,340 buildings had been destroyed across Jabalia since the start of the war, with 40 percent of the destruction concentrated in the city’s refugee camp. More than 3,600 buildings were also destroyed in Beit Lahia. The data suggest that the pace of destruction has reached its highest level during the new Israeli offensive. Satellite imagery from 11 October onwards shows that large swathes of these same areas have now been built up with military fortifications, including a network of raised protective berms made of turned earth. By the end of October, these were providing cover for some 150 military vehicles encircling Jabalia, according to satellite images.

The Washington Post quotes William Goodhind, an analyst at the Contested Ground Project, an independent research project that tracks military movements through satellite imagery in conflict zones around the world, as saying that these berms allow Israeli forces “to move along major supply routes with improved security and therefore greater freedom.”

New clearance and demolition operations over the past two months have been concentrated in southern Jabalia, destroying nearly half of the camp, including the main market area, which was visibly destroyed between October 24 and November 12. In the latest satellite imagery from December 15, a new vehicle route can be seen winding through the camp’s ruins, connecting Sea Street, which runs west to the sea, to a road recently expanded and fortified by the Israeli military – running east to the Israeli border.

This new military axis, which cuts through the heart of once-dense Palestinian cities, “effectively divides Gaza so that more systematic cleansing operations can begin while the de facto border closes off movement to the south,” Goodhind said. “This is likely part of a broader military goal of creating a defensive line across Gaza and bringing the northern territory under Israeli military control.” Amir Avivi, the former deputy commander of the IDF’s Gaza Division, confirmed that the army had opened a new east-west route south of Jabaliya to provide “logistical channels,” but said it did not represent a “long-term policy.”

Katz said last Tuesday that even after Hamas is defeated, the Israeli military "will assume security control in Gaza" with "full freedom of action," just as it does in the occupied West Bank.