[News] Israel's bulldozers of war: Finishing what the Nakba started

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 Israel's bulldozers of war: Finishing what the Nakba started

Washington's subsidized bulldozer shipments are enabling Tel Aviv to raze
Gaza to the ground, reviving tactics used during the Nakba to ethnically
cleanse Palestine.

Robert Inlakesh <https://thecradle.co/authors/robert-inlakesh>

SEP 22, 2025 -
https://thecradle.co/articles/israels-bulldozers-of-war-finishing-what-the-nakba-started
Photo Credit: The Cradle

In recent months, Israel has ramped up its use of heavily-armored
bulldozers to raze entire neighborhoods, olive groves, and critical
infrastructure across the already devastated Gaza Strip. These machines
form part of a systematic strategy to permanently alter Gaza's geography
and demography.

In January, US President Donald Trump greenlit the transfer of 134 D9
bulldozers <https://www.jfeed.com/news-israel/sqt3hg> to Israel, upon the
implementation of the Gaza–Israel ceasefire agreement. This massive deal
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/report-claims-washington-holding-up-shipment-of-armored-bulldozers-to-israel/>
had previously been frozen under former US president Joe Biden's
administration. The US-made Caterpillar machines, dubbed "Doobi" or "Teddy
Bear" in Hebrew, were swiftly put to use after Israel violated and ended
the ceasefire. Soon after, “Operation Gideon's Chariots” was launched on 16
May, flattening over 2,100 buildings
<https://www.ynet.co.il/yedioth/article/yokra14488814#google_vignette> in
Khan Yunis alone, shortly after the deal was finalized.

*US bulldozers powering Israel’s war machine*

In July, Israel received <https://www.ynetnews.com/article/r1seew3ree> a
shipment of bulldozers from the US, in what has been described as “the
largest air-and-sea logistics operation in the history of the State of
Israel,” according to a Defense Ministry official. Back in February, Tel
Aviv also requested another military purchase of brand-new bulldozers,
estimated to cost a total of $295 million. In March, the US then
fast-tracked the deal, managing to bypass congressional approval
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250310-us-fast-tracks-295m-arms-deal-to-israel-bypassing-congressional-review/>
by doing so.

Many of these machines have since been deployed to expand Israel's
so-called buffer zone
<https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/26/us/coast-guard-illicit-drug-offload-cocaine-hnk?iid=cnn_buildContentRecirc_end_recirc&recs_exp=more-from-cnn-right-rail&tenant_id=popular.article.en>
in Gaza, now stretching more than one kilometer into the coastal enclave,
severing the strip from the rest of occupied Palestine. There, Israel’s
combat engineering corps – which includes the Yahalom, Asaf, and Lahav
battalions – have been used to both bulldoze and rig buildings with
explosives, also destroying the majority of Gaza’s agricultural lands.
According to UN estimates, 92 percent
<https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/04/1162491> of Gaza's residential
structures have been either partially or completely destroyed.

With the Israeli army overstretched and short on manpower, the Israeli
Defense Ministry has enlisted private contractors to drive the demolition
effort. Ads offering up to $882 a day
<https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1929420273792454730> have circulated on
social media, while investigative reports from *Haaretz* reveal the
operation now includes more than 500 heavy engineering vehicles, racking up
costs of nearly $30 million per month
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-08-19/ty-article-magazine/.premium/the-cost-of-demolition-gaza-never-in-israeli-history-were-so-many-buildings-demolished/00000198-c1d2-dc9d-abd9-dbded6b40000?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&lts=1755949835849>
.

*A destructive legacy *

Immediately following Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October 2023, Israel
began halting exports of military equipment and tanks, announcing instead
its purchase of dozens of bulldozers
<https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/bjcr08wv6>. This move came
as an effort to reinforce their armored units. The Israeli bulldozer
strategy finds its origins in the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
<https://yplus.ps/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Pappe-Ilan-The-Ethnic-Cleansing-of-Palestine.pdf>
(1947-1949), during the Nakba (The Catastrophe), where Zionist militia
forces not only expelled some 750,000 people from their homes, but
demolished over 400 villages
<https://www.zochrot.org/villages/nakba_map/en?Nakba_Map> as a form of
erasing their connection to the land.

The Caterpillar D9 – first acquired by Israel shortly after its release in
1954 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBYF8tP5zOs> – has since become a
staple of the Israeli army's arsenal. There have been numerous
modifications added to it, leading to the D9L, D9N, D9R, and D9T, which are
all deployed by Israel today. These vehicles are then sold to Israel by the
American company as civilian bulldozers, despite often being part of US
military packages, and are subsidized by American tax dollars.

When the CAT D9s arrive, they are quickly fitted with Israeli-developed
<https://english.iswnews.com/33275/military-knowledge-d9-armoured-bulldozer/>
armor,
parts, and weaponry. The Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) weapons company
is primarily responsible for converting the bulldozers for military
purposes. Even Israeli universities have been involved in the D9
development project, as Technion University
<https://corporatewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/targeting-israeli-apartheid-jan-2012.pdf>
in Haifa was responsible for designing the first remote-controlled version
of the D9 that is used in Gaza today.

Israel does not make public the number of D-9 bulldozers it currently has
in operation. In fact, it actively works to obscure that knowledge from the
public. Since acquiring the D9s in the 1950s, Israel has used them in every
major conflict as key weapons of war, ranging from the 1956 Suez Crisis,
through to the First and Second Intifadas, right up until today.

One of the largest purchases came in 2001 of 50 bulldozers
<https://forward.com/news/129547/caterpillar-caught-in-web-of-middle-east-politics/>,
yet over the decades, bulldozer purchases
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEP8KjuQHtI> were occasionally interrupted
by legal challenges, such as the case brought by the family of Rachel Corrie
<https://www.instagram.com/reel/DHRzWz3K6TO/remembering-rachel-corrie-the-us-peace-activist-crushed-to-death-by-an-israeli-b/?hl=en>
– an American peace activist crushed to death by a D9 in 2003– but these
were ultimately dismissed by US courts, and the deal was unfrozen. In 2017,
Israeli outlet *Walla News* reported that 20 heavy engineering vehicles
<https://news-walla-co-il.translate.goog/item/3040197?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp>
were purchased from Caterpillar, which it labelled “the largest of its kind
in 20 years.” Despite the lack of an official policy, an investigative piece
<https://archive.is/20250819131026/https:/www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-08-19/ty-article-magazine/.premium/the-cost-of-demolition-gaza-never-in-israeli-history-were-so-many-buildings-demolished/00000198-c1d2-dc9d-abd9-dbded6b40000>
last month by *Haaretz* found that the military demolition campaign is
being driven by commanders “on the ground”:

“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.”

This mirrors the implementation of Plan Dalet
<https://www.palestine-studies.org/sites/default/files/attachments/jps-articles/Plan%20dalet.pdf>
during the Nakba, where orders to expel Palestinians were implicit, leaving
execution up to field officers. Then, as now, the goal remains the same –
to depopulate and reconfigure the land.

*A nationwide demolition doctrine*

Between 1967 and 2011, Israel destroyed at least 28,000
<https://www.fagforbundet.no/globalassets/globale-filer/dangerous-liaisons-ii.pdf>Palestinian
homes, many of which were demolished with bulldozers and other heavy
equipment. This does not even include the number of homes destroyed in Gaza
during its major attacks on the territory, when bulldozers were also used,
in 2012 and 2014. The bulldozer strategy is so entrenched in Israeli public
consciousness that the late former prime minister and war criminal, Ariel
Sharon, was often referred to as “The Bulldozer
<https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2014/1/11/the-legacy-of-ariel-the-bulldozer-sharon>,”
and the nickname for the D9s was originally “Pooh HaDov” (Winnie the Pooh),
before evolving to become “Teddy Bear.”

While Gaza bears the brunt, this strategy is far from confined to the
besieged coastal strip. In occupied East Jerusalem
<https://thecradle.co/articles-id/1247>, settler groups exploit Israel's 1950
Absentee Property Law <https://www.adalah.org/en/law/view/538> to
expropriate Palestinian homes, while the state denies building permits to
justify demolitions. Since 1993, around 3,000 structures
<https://www.oikoumene.org/resources/documents/fact-sheet-east-jerusalem-demolitions-april-2023>
have been destroyed this way. Similarly, in the Negev, Israel has set up a
system with the Bedouin towns in the area, whereby the majority of their
villages are deemed “unrecognized.” These 14 villages are consistently
bulldozed
<https://www.nif.org/stories/palestinian-citizens-of-israel/protecting-unrecognized-bedouin-villages-in-the-negev/>,
despite the residents there holding Israeli citizenship.

In the occupied West Bank <https://thecradle.co/articles-id/33222>,
Palestinian homes are demolished, due to punitive measures that were once
banned but had returned as State policy in 2014. In essence, if you carry
out an attack against an Israeli, your family home will be destroyed.
Israeli officials and settler leaders openly invoke the Biblical language
<https://thecradle.co/articles-id/33222> of ‘Judea and Samaria’ to frame
this policy as divinely sanctioned, transforming collective punishment into
a supposed religious duty. Beyond punitive demolitions, the Israeli army
has also destroyed homes and orchards under the pretext of military zoning
or permit violations, particularly in Area C. Refugee camps like Nour
al-Shams
<https://www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfeed/2024/4/24/what-is-israels-bulldozer-strategy-in-the-occupied-west-bank>
and Jenin <https://thecradle.co/articles-id/29463> have seen entire
communities uprooted by bulldozer assaults that cut off water, power, and
roads. Similar tactics are now being applied in Syria's Quneitra
<https://syrianobserver.com/foreign-actors/israeli-operations-in-southern-syria-spark-alarm-land-clearing-and-home-demolitions-reported.html>
province and southern Lebanon
<https://thecradle.co/articles/why-israel-occupies-five-lebanese-hills>,
where the Israeli army seeks to create new “security zones” with the same
machinery.

In all these areas, under different legal and security excuses, the goal is
the same. Throughout the month of August alone
<https://x.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1959781034549186622>, Israeli
bulldozer drivers openly published dozens of videos bragging about
demolishing thousands of olive trees and homes.

*Western complicity and the machinery of ethnic cleansing*

The D9 may be the poster child of this policy, but it is not alone.
Excavators and engineering equipment from American, South Korean, and
European firms have been used to build settlements and raze Palestinian
land. Bulldozers used in the infamous mass demolition campaign against
homes in the Masafer Yatta
<https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2025/7/10/west-bank-palestinians-prepare-to-lose-homes-as-israel-pushes-for-expulsion>
area of Al-Khalil (Hebron) were supplied by Volvo. The equipment of Volvo
was even used in the construction of illegal settlements such as Har Gilo
<https://www.whoprofits.org/companies/company/3644>.

Hyundai Heavy Industries has also long provided track excavators and other
machinery that have been used by the Israeli military and in the
construction of illegal settlements. In 2017, Hyundai equipment was even
used in the construction of a settler-only road in the occupied West Bank,
a project which uprooted 700 olive trees
<https://investigate.info/company/hd-hyundai-heavy>.

Due to a lack of sufficient tanks and armoured personnel carriers, Israel
has also been relying on AM General HMMWV Humvees to transport its forces
and workers to carry out demolition work, recently placing an order for “
hundreds” more of these vehicles. The US-based General Motors company
also signed
a deal back in 2022
<https://www.whoprofits.org/companies/company/3959?general-motors-company>
to supply both vehicles and engines to the Israeli military.

The complicity of western corporations in the bulldozer doctrine allows a
depleted Israeli military to sustain what all major human rights groups –
including Israel’s own B’Tselem
<https://www.btselem.org/press_releases/20250728_our_genocide> – have
called genocide in Gaza. The policy binds Israeli society itself to the
machinery of dispossession, drawing in civilian firms, contractors, and
workers into the architecture of ethnic cleansing. In this way, today’s
bulldozer campaign revives the very same strategy of erasure first
unleashed during the Nakba.
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