‘Kill zone’: Israeli soldiers expose shoot-to-kill policy in Gaza’s Netzarim corridor

Israeli soldiers have revealed appalling accounts of the notorious “kill zone” in the besieged Gaza Strip’s Netzarim corridor where lawlessness is rampant and a shoot-to-kill policy is exercised against Palestinian civilians.

An investigative report on Wednesday, based on testimonies of a number of unnamed Israeli soldiers and commanders, exposed the terrifying accounts of the extreme violence unleashed against Palestinians in the Netzarim corridor, which is a zone of occupation that the Tel Aviv regime has set up in the Palestinian territory during its ongoing genocidal war in Gaza, Israel’s leading daily Haaretz reported.

“Of 200 bodies, only 10 were confirmed as Hamas members,” said an Israeli soldier who fought in Gaza, adding that anyone who crosses an imaginary line in the contested Neztarim corridor is shot to death, with every Palestinian casualty counting as a terrorist even if they were just a child.

Personnel of Israeli armed forces interviewed by Haaretz described arbitrary killings, collapsing military protocols, and lawless command decisions all under the banner of security operations. Central to these revelations is the so-called “kill zone” in the Netzarim corridor, a seven-kilometer-wide strip stretching from Kibbutz Be’eri to the Mediterranean.

According to the report, the area has been cleared of Palestinian residents, with their homes demolished for the construction of military roads and positions. Although Palestinians are officially banned from entering, testimonies suggest the reality is far more brutal.

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Soldiers reported that civilians who entered these zones are killed and often labeled as terrorists, inflating casualty statistics. According to one veteran, unit commanders turn these numbers into competitions, seeking to surpass each other in reported killings.

“For the division, the kill zone extends as far as a sniper can see,” said a recently-discharged Division 252 officer. “We're killing civilians there who are then counted as terrorists.”

The officer stressed that the announcements by the Israeli military “about casualty numbers have turned this into a competition between units. If Division 99 kills 150 [people], the next unit aims for 200.”

This “line of dead bodies,” as it is known among soldiers, has become infamous for its grim markers: uncollected corpses left to decompose, attracting stray dogs. The presence of these dogs serves as a warning for Gaza residents to avoid the area.

“The forces in the field call it ‘the line of dead bodies,’” said an Israeli commander in Division 252, adding, “After shootings, bodies are not collected, attracting packs of dogs who come to eat them. In Gaza, people know that wherever you see these dogs, that’s where you must not go.”

The testimonies also reveal incidents of moral and ethical breakdown. In one case, soldiers opened fire on a boy suspected of being a militant. After the shooting, they discovered he was unarmed and only 16 years old. However, the battalion commander praised the soldiers for killing a “terrorist” and dismissed concerns over his civilian status.

Another incident involved a tank firing on unarmed civilians spotted by a surveillance drone, killing three people and capturing a fourth, who was later humiliated before being released.

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The expanding powers of Israeli military commanders have further exacerbated the situation. Brigadier General Yehuda Vach, the commander of Division 252, has declared, “There are no innocents in Gaza,” and thus, permitted indiscriminate violence. Soldiers report that Vach frequently shifted the “kill zone” boundary without clear justification and authorized actions, such as shooting cyclists or forcibly displacing Gaza residents.

Compounding the chaos is the erosion of oversight mechanisms. Decisions to launch airstrikes or drone attacks, once requiring high-level approval, have been delegated to lower-ranking officers. Soldiers report that expedited procedures, such as the “flash procedure,” allow strikes to proceed without proper review.

According to Haaretz, amid growing concerns about accountability and ethics, testimonies from Israeli military personnel suggest a breakdown of military discipline, with commanders operating like independent militias in a lawless conflict zone.

Israel launched a genocidal war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas waged the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Flood against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime's decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.

The regime’s bloody onslaught on Gaza has so far killed at least 45,097 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 107,244 others. Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under rubble.

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