Avraham Zarviv, a reserve Israeli army bulldozer operator, has emerged as one of the most visible faces of Israel’s campaign of destruction in the Gaza Strip. Earlier this year, he publicly boasted of demolishing an average of 50 buildings per week — likely totaling thousands over the course of the war.

But while Zarviv has become a symbol of Israel’s systematic razing of Palestinian homes and other civilian infrastructure in Gaza, an investigation by the Israeli settlement watchdog Kerem Navot reveals that his own home in the occupied West Bank has itself been under an Israeli demolition order for 25 years.

Zarviv, 53, serves as a rabbinical judge in Tel Aviv and heads the pre-military preparatory program in the settlement of Beit El, near Ramallah. Since October 7, he has completed hundreds of days of reserve duty in Gaza, many of them spent operating an armored D9 bulldozer. 

He began gaining fame at the end of 2024 when he uploaded videos to social media of what he described as the “flattening of Jabalia,” a city in northern Gaza. Since then, several more videos showing him demolishing buildings or urging the resettlement of Gaza with Israeli Jews have gone viral. 

In an interview with Channel 14 in January this year, he explained that he learned to “play [as one would a musical instrument] the D9” on the fly, and that before long, he was “bringing down seven-, six-, five-story houses, one after another.” In a video from May 2025, he can be heard saying: “Even when they surrender, nothing will be left for them.” 

In a recent interview with the religious newspaper Arutz Sheva, Zarviv said he lives in a neighborhood of the Beit El settlement known as Beit El B. Yet while Israel considers Beit El itself to be a “legal” settlement (although all settlements are illegal under international law), Kerem Navot’s investigation found that Zarviv’s home is classified as illegal even under Israeli law. 

The property, which features a sign with the family’s name, has been under a standing demolition order since 2000. Located on the northwestern edge of Beit El near the Jalazone refugee camp, Zarviv’s home corresponds with a demolition order found in records belonging to the Civil Administration — the bureaucratic arm of Israel’s occupation — which Kerem Navot obtained through a Freedom of Information request. 

According to those records, Demolition Order R-96/00 applies to a “residential house + yard.” Zarviv took out a mortgage on the property on Aug. 13, 2000 — just one day before the Civil Administration issued a stop-work order. A final demolition order followed a month later. Nearly 25 years on, the order has not been enforced.

Speaking to +972 and Local Call, Kerem Navot founder Dror Etkes noted that Beit El was established on privately owned Palestinian land belonging to the village of Dura Al-Qara, seized under a 1970 military confiscation order. Though Israel’s Supreme Court ruled in the 1979 landmark Elon Moreh decision that such land seizures for settlement purposes were illegal, settlements already built were allowed to remain.

While demolitions did occur in parts of Beit El — such as in the Ulpana neighborhood in 2012 and Batei Dreinhoff in 2014 — they have not continued in recent years. According to Etkes, the settlement has continued to expand beyond the 1970 seizure boundaries, often without planning approval. 

“Hundreds of buildings were constructed outside the seizure order,” he explained. “A large part of northern Beit El is built on private land. Zarviv’s home is in this unregulated area.”

The Civil Administration did not respond to +972 and Local Call’s request for comment.

‘Gazans are going back to nowhere’

In the Arutz Sheva interview, Zarviv said the widespread use of bulldozers in Gaza began when the commander of the Givati Brigade came to view “heavy engineering equipment” as essential to the war effort.

“Gradually, those who sat next to the operator learned the craft and started operating,” he said. “That’s how we increased the number of operators — without licenses, without anything. Over time, we began formalizing it. For 10 months, I operated the D9 without any license or permit. That’s how it is in war. When needed, the rules change a little.”

According to Zarviv, the strategy of leveling Gaza’s built environment first emerged from lower-ranking soldiers and field commanders. “[It came] without any order [from the top brass]. It came from below,” he said. 

“The army invests hundreds of millions in destroying the Gaza Strip,” Zarviv continued. “Just the fuel for my D9 costs NIS 5,000 [$1,500] per day. That doesn’t include oil, [exhaust] pipes that burst, the operator, food. Operating it costs around NIS 20,000 [$6,000] a day.”

He noted that although dozens of bulldozers are now in widespread use by the army, the method has not still been formally adopted by the Israeli government or cabinet. “From the Givati Brigade emerged a determined group that began developing this doctrine,” he said. “The D9 isn’t just about clearing routes or assisting — it’s the fighting itself. Instead of sending soldiers to clear houses and risk their lives, we destroy the houses from outside.” 

Zarviv claims this has now become standard across the military and “part of the combat strategy.” A photo published by right-wing journalist Yinon Magal on July 16 shows Zarviv posing in Gaza with Israeli Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi — perhaps a signal of tacit military endorsement of Zarviv’s role in the war.

He has repeatedly bragged about the results. “Rafah today is cleansed — there is no Rafah,” he said in the Arutz Sheva interview. “Almost the entire northern Strip is lying in rubble. They’re dealing with Khan Younis now — it will also be destroyed” 

“When the prime minister said [resettling Gaza is] ‘not realistic,’ I started adding to every video ‘Until the end, until victory,’ and then ‘Until settlement,’ because it is realistic. If we normalize that there should be settlements in Gaza, then there will be settlements in Gaza. It’s ours — God gave it to us. It’s no different than anywhere else in the Land of Israel.”

Zarviv’s vision lines up with an investigation by +972 and Local Call earlier this year, which found that the systematic destruction of residential buildings, public buildings, and even agricultural lands in Gaza has become a fundamental part of the army’s operational method, and in many cases an end goal in itself.

“[Gazans] are going back to nowhere,” Zarviv said in the Channel 14 interview. “Tens of thousands of families don’t have documents, don’t have pictures of their children, don’t have IDs, nothing. They come back and don’t know where their house is.”

Following an inquiry from +972, an Israeli army spokesperson said that Zarviv’s public statements “do not reflect the IDF’s position or the nature of the missions assigned to forces in the field.” A spokesperson for Israel’s Rabbinical Courts referred inquiries to Zarviv directly, who did not respond to our request for comment.

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