Report: Israel is falsely designating Gaza areas as empty in order to bomb them

The Israeli army has been launching air strikes on residential neighbourhoods in Gaza that they treat as evacuated in recent weeks, despite knowing that many of the houses bombed were filled with civilians, +972 Magazine and Local Call reported, citing two intelligence sources.

The army designates a neighbourhood as “green,” meaning clear of residents, based on a "flawed" algorithmic analysis of phone usage patterns over a wide area, the report said. According to the sources, the military does not carry out post-strike assessments to confirm whether the analysis was accurate, and determine how many civilians were actually killed.

“It’s clear there are a lot of people in those houses," said one military source who was in Gaza.

“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.

Sources said the army uses this method to authorise more air strikes while claiming they meet the principle of proportionality.