Occupied Palestinian Territory – Over the past week, the Israeli army has detonated around 120 booby-trapped vehicles carrying nearly 840 tons of explosives in residential areas of Gaza City, an average of more than 17 vehicles per day. Each detonation is equivalent to a 3.7-magnitude earthquake on the Richter scale, marking the largest campaign of brute force aimed at destroying the population as part of Israel's ongoing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, now in its 24th consecutive month.
According to scientific standards used to measure explosive energy and earthquakes, seismological and military physics estimates indicate that detonating 6–7 tons of TNT, the load carried by each vehicle, roughly equals the energy released by a natural earthquake of 3.7 magnitude.
Severe destruction from such blasts typically extends for tens of metres (around 90 metres at a high intensity level), while fractures and minor damage can reach several hundred metres, extending up to nearly one kilometre in open areas.
Field documentation in Gaza City shows that the detonations cause clear shaking of buildings even several kilometres away from the blast centre, lasting a few seconds in a manner similar to natural earthquakes.
Given that nearly all buildings in Gaza have already been damaged or weakened by more than 23 months of continuous bombardment, each new explosion causes disproportionately greater destruction. The cracked structures and open spaces amplify the impact, damaging dozens of buildings hundreds of metres away from each new blast.
The Israeli army's practice of converting out-of-service armoured vehicles into massive, remotely detonated explosive charges is unprecedented in scale and method in modern history. Yet this barbaric conduct faces no effective response from the international community, reflecting stark double standards, injustice, and disregard for Palestinian lives.
In the past week, Israel has intensified its use of these booby-trapped vehicles in three main axes of Gaza City, the southern, eastern, and northern axes, with the declared objective of destroying the city's central residential blocks and forcibly displacing its population.
The catastrophic impact of these explosions extends beyond physical destruction and displacement. They are also used as a systematic tool of psychological terror, spreading extreme fear among civilians and coercively driving them to flee. The detonations produce deafening blasts that reverberate throughout Gaza City, causing the remaining buildings to shake under the pressure of violent shockwaves, leaving civilians trapped in a state of constant fear, trauma, and insecurity.
International inaction and the complicity of some states have enabled Israel to openly pursue the destruction of Gaza City without even attempting to offer legal pretexts, reinforcing its impunity and undermining the effectiveness of international law in protecting civilians from the gravest crimes, foremost among them genocide.
The use of such booby-trapped vehicles is explicitly prohibited under international humanitarian law, as they constitute inherently indiscriminate weapons whose effects cannot be confined to legitimate military targets. Due to their wide-scale explosive nature, they inevitably strike civilians and civilian objects, in clear violation of the principles of distinction and proportionality, two pillars of international humanitarian law.
These weapons are classified as prohibited arms, and their use in populated areas constitutes a war crime in itself, as well as a crime against humanity when resulting in killing, forced displacement, deprivation of essential living conditions, or severe suffering as part of a systematic or widespread attack against civilians. Moreover, the systematic use of such vehicles to demolish residential neighbourhoods and deprive people of their homes and means of survival makes them a direct tool of genocide, as defined in the Genocide Convention, particularly the deliberate imposition of living conditions intended to destroy a group in whole or in part.
The destructive use of booby-trapped vehicles not only kills and displaces Palestinians under deadly conditions, but also aims to erase entire residential areas and infrastructure, preventing any prospect of restoring life in Gaza City and undermining Palestinians' right to remain on their land and return to their homes.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor calls on the UN General Assembly to immediately act under its historic Resolution 377 A(V) of 1950, known as "Uniting for Peace," which authorises the Assembly to convene an emergency special session and adopt collective recommendations—including the establishment of a peacekeeping force, when the Security Council fails to fulfil its responsibilities due to veto use or lack of consensus.
The General Assembly should urgently adopt a resolution within this framework to form and deploy a peacekeeping force in the Gaza Strip, ensuring an end to crimes against civilians, unimpeded delivery of humanitarian aid, protection of health and relief facilities, lifting of the blockade, and reconstruction. Activating this mechanism is both a legal and moral obligation upon the international community to protect civilians in Gaza.
All states, individually and collectively, must uphold their legal responsibilities and urgently act to halt the genocide in Gaza in all its forms, take all effective measures to protect Palestinian civilians, and ensure Israel's compliance with international law and the binding orders of the International Court of Justice.
