The Cost of Demolishing Gaza: Never in Israel's History Were So Many Buildings Leveled
Thursday, August 21, 2025 at 10:09PM Hundreds of pieces of heavy construction equipment rented at high prices, thousands of liters of diesel fuel a day, huge amounts of concrete to fill tunnels: The demolition of the Gaza Strip is one of the most expensive engineering projects in Israeli history
by Hagai Amit 21 August 2025 Haaretz
A D6 bulldozer operates in the Gaza Strip. Officers who were asked about this said: 'No one is demolishing buildings for the fun of it.'Credit: IDF Spokesperson's Unit
In the week that has passed since I began working on this story – until the time you are reading it – hundreds of pieces of heavy engineering equipment from Israel have demolished hundreds, if not thousands, of homes in the Gaza Strip, with the Defense Ministry spending millions of shekels for this work.
Never in Israeli history have so many homes and buildings been demolished consecutively, in what is also one of the most expensive engineering projects the country has ever took on. The excavators, bulldozers and huge D9 Caterpillar tractors in Gaza never stop working, even for a moment – and this is not expected to change.
The security cabinet's approval for taking over Gaza City promises Israeli forces many more months in which they can destroy thousands of homes and other buildings, taking into consideration the destruction that accompanies any IDF ground occupation of the Gaza Strip. In practice, some ministers in the security cabinet explicitly said they did not understand why Gaza City was not already in ruins like other cities in Gaza.
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The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories' approval on Sunday to renew the entry of tents and equipment for shelters into Gaza, for the first time since the blockade was imposed in March, reminded us that hundreds of thousands of Gazans will have to replace the homes they still have left with tents.
This is an unprecedented engineering project, taking place despite neither the military having an official policy on the matter, nor the political leadership having made an official decision to demolish all of the homes in Gaza. In fact, this policy is coming from the forces on the ground, from company and battalion commanders, who are concerned that the buildings left standing endanger the lives of their troops.
Israeli forces in southern Gaza.Credit: David Bachar
Officers who were asked about this said: "No one is demolishing buildings for the fun of it." In reality, inside Gaza, every building that still stands is a threat, every house is a structure that can be booby-trapped. Every building can conceal a sniper or an entrance to a tunnel, and a Hamas terrorist can shoot at Israeli troops from any of them. From the perspective of the forces, it is safest to leave any area where they operate leveled to the ground.
A small number of dominant Israeli infrastructure firms provide services to the Defense Ministry. These include the Talor Karadi Group, owned by Lior Karadi; Asia Construction; the Olenik group; Farm Earthworks and Development (Meshek Afar Vetashtiot), owned by Alon Elgali; and Eran Y.D., owned by Eran and David Yifrach.
Each of these companies rents out dozens of pieces of heavy construction equipment to the Defense Ministry. The price for a day's work in Gaza is much higher than it is for the same work inside Israel. A client will pay about 3,500 shekels ($1035) a day to use a piece of heavy equipment within Israel, while the Defense Ministry today pays 5,000 shekels ($1,479) a day to use the equipment inside Gaza. About 1,200 shekels ($355) of that goes to the equipment operator, who would earn only half to two-thirds of that amount for doing the same work inside Israel.
Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip.Credit: IDF Spokesperson
No more equipment left in the inventory
Along with large firms, smaller contractors also work in Gaza, renting out two or three pieces of equipment directly to the Defense Ministry, and hundreds of IDF reservists operate heavy equipment that belongs to the army. "The reservists who operate what the army calls mechanical engineering equipment for the IDF are sometimes less skilled in demolition work. That's why they bring in special teams from companies like ours," said Lior Karadi, the owner of the Talor Karadi group.
Every team has at least five pieces of heavy equipment. "For example, we go in with eight to 12 pieces of equipment. Such a team demolishes almost 100 buildings in a day. And they work all the time. We have an operational branch for Gaza, with foremen and skilled workers. All the teams enter with IDF security."
"The demand means that importers currently have no heavy equipment in stock. If you order a piece of heavy equipment from a company like Volvo, you'll wait six to seven months for it to be delivered. That's why last week we were in China to look into importing a large amount of equipment here," said Karadi.
"The teams that demolish the buildings in Gaza flatten them to the ground, so that not even a pillar remains standing – so that terrorists can't hide behind it. This way, even if there's a tunnel under the building, they seal it with the debris." Nonetheless, Karadi said, "We would rather build the country than destroy Gaza."
Heavy mechanical equipment on the way to Rafah, in southern Gaza.Credit: Eliahu Hershkovitz
Yafit Elgali, the wife of Alon Elgali, the owner of Farm Earthworks and Development, said: "We've been working with the IDF since the beginning of the war. The scope of the operations has grown with time. They went down during the cease-fire, and, after the end of the cease-fire, we returned to operations with intensity and even more power. We're doing what's needed."
Elgali agreed that "the army has no choice. It's a workforce and equipment on a scale that the IDF doesn't have, and the rental price is, of course, higher because of the level of risk. A few of our pieces of equipment stopped working and were put out of operation because mortar shells were fired at them."
S., a heavy equipment operator in Gaza, said: "You need to not be afraid of the shooting and shells, and be ready to ride inside a Namer armored personnel carrier from the border to Khan Yunis. There you get on the bugger [small excavator], and receive an order through a walkie-talkie: 'You see the white house on the right – take it down.' That's how you take down three to five houses a day. ...The equipment belongs to one company, another contractor rents it from them – and he pays me 1,200 shekels a day instead of the 600 [shekels] ($177) I would make in a normal place."
The need to demolish
Apart from the 150,000 shekels ($44,341) a month the Defense Ministry pays to rent a piece of equipment, the Defense Ministry also covers the cost of the diesel fuel. The cost of operating 500 pieces of heavy construction equipment is almost 100 million shekels ($29.56 million) a month, for example. But the demand for this heavy equipment doesn't end with Gaza.
"The need stems from what is happening in Gaza and certainly from the opening of another market because of the need to demolish the buildings damaged in the Iranian attacks – and before that," said Karadi. "The effect of the attacks on Israel was also expressed in the area of debris disposal and the renovations that need to be done to the buildings. They are talking today about an additional million tons of construction debris as a result of the demolitions caused by the attacks on Israel."
"We are carrying out work in Holon, we did work in the entire area near the Gaza border, and next week we'll work in Be'er Sheva. To this, you can add the work that has opened up inside the country for expanding Defense Ministry bases, and projects such as creating areas for organizing [troops]. It can be said that today most of the activities of the industry in which we work are for the Defense Ministry," he added.
Along with the work of the heavy construction equipment, the infrastructure industry has also seen demand from the Defense Ministry in other areas. "Our concrete plants are working a lot more," said Karadi. "In addition to building and selling shelters and safe rooms, our trucks and cement mixers have been enlisted for sealing tunnels. The amount of concrete the army needs is crazy. We're talking about thousands of cubic meters of concrete."
"The war's influence is also felt, for example, in the quarry industry. It's an industry that seemingly shouldn't be impacted by it. But in practice, so far, the army has brought into Gaza almost 250,000 tons of substrate, mostly for paving roads," said Karadi. "We're trying to advance a pilot project with the Defense Ministry so it can be done with recycled materials. For now, they won't give us approval for that – not to use the recycled material from the demolitions in the Gaza Strip and not material from the demolitions here in Israel."
"If they would provide approval for it, we would save tens, if not hundreds, of millions of shekels. At a time when inside Israel there is use of recycled materials in large quantities, it is actually in Gaza where they don't approve of it. On the day when we will have to give the Gaza Strip back to them, a day I hope never comes, they will use this substrate to rebuild."
A general view shows destruction in North Gaza, as seen from Israel's border with Gaza, Israel, August2025.Credit: Ammar Awad/ REUTERS
12 years of removing debris
The operations of the infrastructure and construction companies in Gaza lack a major part of the work they do inside Israel: Removing the debris they create. This is a component that, on the day it happens, will raise the cost of carrying out the demolition. The United Nations' official estimate talks about over 50 million tons of debris, which would cost about $1 billion to remove.
"Today, the estimates are that there are 60 to 70 tons of debris," said Karadi. "The estimate from professionals and mine is that it will take eight to 12 years to deal with all this debris. This is waste that requires surgical work because some of the destroyed buildings are still booby-trapped. There is a huge amount of iron, and transporting it over the sandy ground of Gaza is complicated."
According to him, "Just the handling on the ground, before the removal, will cost 1 to 2 billion shekels ($295.89 million to $591.78 million). If they want to treat this waste one day, 90 percent of this material will serve as substrate layers for the infrastructure they'll need in Gaza," Karadi added.
Along with the use of the material as a paving layer, a bulldozer driver who works in Gaza, who spoke to Haaretz this week, pointed out a potential for profits buried in the ruins in Gaza. "Do you know how much scrap metal there is in the Gaza Strip? If someone wanted to collect it one day and sell it – these are quantities that are worth a fortune."
The IDF said, in response to this report: "The IDF is in the midst of a complex and intense fight against terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip, including the Hamas terrorist organization, which uses civilian buildings and exploits them in a cruel and cynical manner for terrorist purposes. In this context, IDF forces have repeatedly encountered buildings, roads and infrastructure that have been rigged with powerful explosive devices that have resulted in the deaths and injuries of IDF soldiers.
"The IDF is required to maneuver through these complex areas in order to locate and dismantle Hamas infrastructure in accordance with the objectives of the war, and it is required to destroy buildings based on a clear military need and threats posed to IDF forces in the area. According to army orders, property destruction is only carried out when there is an operational basis that requires it, and the IDF has never had a policy that allows for the deliberate destruction of civilian property."
It added, "The IDF is taking various measures to minimize damage to civilian structures as much as possible, while Hamas is deliberately dragging the fighting into these areas, and is requiring the IDF to operate in them. The IDF will not elaborate on the content of operational procedures that are applied during the fighting."
The Defense Ministry has not commented on this report.
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