In recent weeks, the Israeli army has been launching airstrikes on residential neighborhoods in Gaza that they treat as evacuated, despite knowing that many of the houses bombed were filled with civilians who could not or did not want to leave, according to two intelligence sources who spoke to +972 Magazine and Local Call.

The army’s designation of a particular neighborhood as “green,” or cleared of residents, is based on a crude algorithmic analysis of phone usage patterns over a wide area — not on a detailed, house-by-house assessment before bombing, as previously revealed by +972 Magazine, Local Call and The New York Times.

Two intelligence sources noticed in May that the army was bombing homes and killing families, while internally recording that the homes were empty or nearly empty of residents, based on the flawed algorithmic calculation.

“This occupancy estimate is based on a bunch of incredibly crappy algorithms,” one intelligence source explained to +972 and Local Call. “It’s clear there are a lot of people in those houses. They haven’t really evacuated.

“You look at the evacuation tables, and everything is green — that means between 0 to 20 percent of the population remains. The whole area we were in, in Khan Younis, was marked green, and it clearly wasn’t,” the source added.

Last week, an airstrike in Khan Younis hit the home of Dr. Alaa Al-Najjar, killing nine of her 10 young children, and her husband Dr. Hamdi al-Najjar, who succumbed to his wounds a few days later. “Some [of the children] were mutilated and all were burnt,” her husband’s brother told The Guardian. In a press release issued after the incident, the army stated that it had targeted “suspects” and that Khan Younis had been evacuated. 

Before designating a neighborhood as “green,” the intelligence algorithm calculates the number of residents in each house according to the area’s estimated evacuation rate. If the algorithm estimates that 80 percent of residents have left, then the expected number of casualties per house is reduced by 80 percent, often without dedicating time to a detailed examination. In a house where 10 Palestinians lived before the war, for example, the system would show that only two remained. “It’s a statistical approach to errors,” said one intelligence source.

In this way, the army can approve more airstrikes and claim they adhere to the principle of proportionality, sources said. They added that the army does not conduct post-strike assessments to determine how many civilians were actually killed, and for this reason, it also does not know how many Palestinians it has killed since October 7. 

While the statistical calculation falsely estimates the number of civilians in each house, the mass killing of civilians in Gaza is not a result of a mistake, but a direct consequence of Israel’s lenient policies regarding civilian harm, multiple sources have said. As previously reported by +972 Magazine and Local Call, army policy allowed officers to kill up to 20 civilians in each house where a junior militant was present and hundreds of civilians when the target was more senior.

Dr. Marta Bo, a senior international law researcher at the Asser Institute in The Hague, told +972 and Local Call that using statistical and imprecise data to determine harm to civilians could be considered a violation of the principle of precaution in international law, which requires states to take measures to minimize anticipated harm to the civilian population.

The two sources explained that since Israel violated the ceasefire in March, most of the military personnel the Israeli army has targeted are low-level, and at times have no rank at all — classified in intelligence records merely as “operative,” indicating a status even lower than that of squad leaders or platoon commanders, and thus of negligible military value. 

According to one of the sources, in recent weeks, many of these attacks only killed civilians and were carried out despite uncertainty about whether they would hit any military targets. Such “misses,” according to several sources, stem from military policies that allow strikes to go ahead without thorough checks — for example, without verifying in real-time that the target is actually present in the building.

Muhammad Shehada, a Palestinian political analyst from Gaza and a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said these policies should be viewed in the context of Israel’s systematic efforts to destroy everything left standing in Gaza.

“No neighborhood in Gaza is fully evacuated,” Shehada said. “Even in areas Israel has been occupying for some time, there would be elderly people, people with disabilities, pregnant women, kids, and orphans who have no one to help them evacuate.”

Shehada explained that since Hamas or Hamas-affiliated individuals are present everywhere in Gaza, these bombing policies amount to “basically carpet bombing or indiscriminate bombing, using unarmed, rank-and-file Hamas members as a pretext to achieve the real goal, which is maximum destruction.” He noted that prior to October 7, Israel would bomb civilian infrastructure in Gaza to deter the population from supporting Hamas, but this time “it’s not about deterrence, it’s about extermination.”

‘Gazans are seen as worthless’

Since Israel violated the ceasefire in March, airstrikes have killed dozens of Palestinians in Gaza every day, the vast majority of which the Israeli army has confirmed are civilians. In May, the average death rate in Gaza stood at 62 people per day, according to reports from the Ministry of Health.

Several of the deadliest airstrikes in recent weeks have targeted schools and hospitals filled with refugees as part of a deliberate strategy, according to a new investigation by The Guardian. Previously considered “sensitive sites,” these locations are now also categorized by the military as “heavy centers” (based on the claim that they host a high concentration of Hamas operatives), and the procedures for authorizing airstrikes against them have been relaxed.

Since early May, the army has hit at least six schools in Gaza, killing more than 120 Palestinians. +972 and Local Call has learned that in one of the recently bombed schools, the number of civilians killed was three times higher than the number of people the army estimated to be there.

On May 12, the army struck the Jabalia Girls School, reportedly killing 15 people. One survivor recounted how they collected the bodies into bags from the school stairwell “like meat.” Another survivor said the explosion woke him at 1 a.m.; he ran and saw the classrooms burning.

“While we were watching the bodies burn, the army called and told us to evacuate the school because they’re going to bomb it again,” he said. “We couldn’t take the burned and wounded children; there were still people alive.” When they returned to the school, those people were already dead.

The IDF spokesperson often claims that Hamas command centers are located in schools, but an intelligence source told +972 and Local Call that this is often an exaggeration. “You bomb two classrooms in a school and kill children just to hit a few low-level operatives,” he said. “They do it because the lives of Gazans are seen as worthless, they’re viewed as an obstacle.”

As +972 and Local Call have previously reported, throughout the war in Gaza, the Israeli army has systematically targeted suspected military operatives when they do not pose any immediate threat — resulting in mass civilian casualties for every authorized strike on military targets. Multiple intelligence sources confirmed for this investigation that the army continues to carry out these “targeted killings” of suspected military operatives in civilian settings, such as schools or family homes, resulting in some of the deadliest attacks since the resumption of the war in March.

‘A de facto ghetto’

Last month, +972 and Local Call revealed that Israel’s systematic destruction of the Gaza Strip – mainly the work of bulldozers and explosives — is the result of a deliberate decision to prevent residents from returning. Just this past week, various videos have surfaced showing bulldozers demolishing homes in Gaza or large buildings being blown up, with the Israeli daily Maariv reporting that “thousands of buildings have been demolished” in recent days.

This ongoing destruction comes as Israel expands “Operation Gideon’s Chariots,” one of whose stated goals is the concentration of Gaza’s population into designated zones. And as Israeli leaders openly and explicitly call to expel all Palestinians from Gaza, the deadly bombing campaign is another tool used to facilitate population transfer.

“The IDF openly says that the pressure on the civilian population is intended to create a real threat to Hamas rule in the Strip,” an Israeli military correspondent wrote this week. 

The testimony of the two intelligence sources, along with those of two additional security sources who were in Gaza in recent months, reinforces this claim. According to the intelligence sources, since March, airstrikes have often been carried out simply “for the sake of attacking,” with no significant direct military value. “There aren’t many targets left. Everyone who mattered has already been killed or is hiding really well. So they’re forcefully looking for targets, and these are just very low quality,” one intelligence source described the situation in recent weeks.

A security source who served in Gaza in recent weeks told +972 and Local Call that the basic logic of “Operation Gideon’s Chariots” is to exert pressure on Hamas through the civilian population by systematically destroying Gaza.

“Instead of in-and-out operations, it’s enter and flatten. Every area the IDF takes, the IDF flattens,” he explained. “The idea is ultimately to push everyone into Al-Mawasi and turn a single neighborhood into the home of two million people, fenced in and controlled by the military, with access only through checkpoints, and the only place where humanitarian aid is brought in. 

“The army doesn’t use the words ‘ghetto’ or ‘ethnic cleansing,’” he added, “[but] it’s a de facto ghetto.”

+972 contacted the IDF Spokesperson for comment on this report; their response will be added here if received.

A version of this article was published in Hebrew on Local Call. Read it here.