Hamza Shabaan woke up mid-air.
A massive blast had hurled him off his mattress, leaving him disoriented and shocked.
Outside, an Israeli explosive-laden, remotely controlled “robot” was crawling through the streets of Gaza City, spreading terror in its wake.
“I looked out the window to see where the robot was, whether it was beside me or nearby,” said Shabaan, 35, speaking to Middle East Eye.
“It turned out it was about 100m away.”
Then another explosion hit, blowing him 2m back from the window.
“I started crawling on my hands and knees, escaping to the living room,” he recalled.
“I could hear the sound of shrapnel and debris hitting everything, horrifying noises.”
Shabaan’s experience is becoming all too common for Palestinians in Gaza City.
Since Israel announced last month that it was expanding its assault on the city, home to nearly one million people, massive explosions have rocked the area almost nightly.
At the centre of this new wave of violence is Israel’s latest battlefield tactic: remotely controlled, explosive-packed vehicles.
Rather than deploying troops on the ground, the Israeli military has been sending decommissioned armoured personnel carriers (APCs) into densely populated residential areas.
These APCs, packed with tonnes of explosives, are remotely navigated into neighbourhoods and then detonated, causing widespread devastation.
In some cases, the vehicles drop explosive barrels along streets and detonate them simultaneously, maximising the destruction across entire blocks.
“The explosions usually start just when you’re trying to sleep, around 10 or 11pm,” said Shabaan, adding that eight to ten blasts can be heard every night.
“They’re extremely powerful. They reduce entire buildings to crushed rubble,” he said.
Translation: Explosive robots turn Gaza City’s night into day. A tough night of violent explosions in Gaza.
Though he lived through many Israeli wars in Gaza and witnessed first-hand the destruction caused by F-16 fighter jets, this was on a different level.
“Nothing compares to these robots,” he said. “They are far more devastating than air strikes.”
‘Wiping off’ Gaza City
Last month, Israel dismissed a ceasefire agreement it had previously approved after Hamas signed off on it.
Instead, the Israeli security cabinet authorised a plan to occupy the Gaza Strip, beginning with the seizure of Gaza City.
Since then, Israel has intensified both aerial and ground attacks, while deploying a growing number of explosive robots.
At least 100 explosive robots have been used in densely populated areas since 13 August, according to the Gaza-based Government media office.
The nonprofit Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor reports that around 300 residential units are destroyed daily due to these explosions.
Each robot is loaded with highly explosive materials, sometimes weighing up to 7 tonnes, according to the organisation.
The deployment has been concentrated in northern, eastern, and southern areas of Gaza City, including Jabalia, al-Zeitoun, al-Sabra, Shujaiya and al-Tuffah neighbourhoods.
The use of these robots is occurring at an “unprecedented pace”, suggesting a strategy “to wipe the city off the map”, Euro-Med Monitor said.
“At the current rate, the rest of the city could be destroyed within two months, a timeline that could shorten further given the Israeli army’s massive firepower and the absence of any international pressure to halt its crimes against Palestinians,” the NGO added.
Israeli media reports confirm residents’ accounts.
According to the Israeli news outlet Walla, Israeli forces have tripled the use of explosive robots in recent weeks.
The report added that hundreds more are being sent into Gaza.
These vehicles are designed to maximise infrastructure destruction and minimise direct engagement with Hamas fighters, thereby reducing risks to Israeli soldiers during ground operations.
Terror and forced displacement
The explosions caused by these robots are so loud and earth-shaking that they have left many Palestinians terrified.
Walla reported that the blasts can be heard more than 100km away from the Gaza Strip, a measure of their sheer intensity.
Palestinians say that fear is part of the strategy.
They believe the use of these machines serves a dual purpose: destruction and psychological warfare, to drive people out of the city as part of what they describe as Israel’s ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing.
Shabaan was one of those forced to flee his home in eastern Gaza City earlier this week as the blasts crept closer.
“The sound is deafening, even from 100m away,” he said.
“Imagine if it were only 10 or 5m, we’d be gone.”
The scale of destruction becomes most apparent the next day, when residents venture out to assess the damage – provided it is safe to do so.
Unlike air strikes, which often leave partial structures behind, these explosive-laden robots obliterate buildings completely, Shabaan explained.
“If the building were seven storeys high, it would become rubble. You can’t even tell there used to be a building there,” he said.
“Just tiny pieces of stone. No trace of floors or structure, like with regular air strikes, nothing left but small fragments of debris.”
This level of devastation was seen last year in Jabalia refugee camp, following an intense Israeli ground assault, where Palestinians first reported the large-scale use of these robots.
They have since been widely deployed in Rafah and parts of northern Gaza, leaving entire neighbourhoods nearly razed to the ground.
As of July, Israel has destroyed around 78 percent of all structures in the Gaza Strip, according to preliminary UN analysis.
An estimated 282,904 housing units have been damaged.
Nearly the entire population of the Gaza Strip has been displaced multiple times since the Israeli genocide in Gaza began in October 2023.
At that time, Israel ordered all residents of Gaza City to flee south in an effort to empty the city of Palestinians.
Now, two years later, it is repeating those same calls in another attempt to forcibly expel the population.
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Source: MEE
