How Israeli weapons are ‘obliterating’ Palestinians and why it constitutes a war crime

Thousands of Palestinians killed by Israel in Gaza have simply vanished into thin air. No remains to identify, no bodies to bury. Nothing remains but blood spattered on the walls and fragments of tissue of those killed.

A major investigation on Wednesday documented at least 2,842 such cases since October 2023, drawing from records kept by Civil Defence teams about people inside a building when it was hit and subsequent body counts. 

They look for blood patterns, tissue, anything that might tell them what happened. When the numbers don't match, when they've searched everywhere and come up empty, they mark those victims as "evaporated."

Yasmin Mahani, a Palestinian woman whose child was targeted in an Israeli strike on al Tabin school in August 2024, went back to the building. It had been sheltering families who'd fled their homes. She found scattered flesh. She found blood. She didn't find her son. "Not even a body to bury," she told Al Jazeera.

Experts say this happens when people are exposed to extreme heat, with many cases attributed to thermobaric and incendiary weapons. 

Thermobaric weapons are designed to create a powerful explosion by using oxygen from the surrounding air to intensify their blast, according to Dr Arthur van Coller, Professor of International Humanitarian Law at the STADIO Higher Education.

“They function by releasing a fuel in the form of gas, aerosol, or fine powder into the air. This fuel cloud mixes with atmospheric oxygen and is subsequently ignited,” van Coller tells TRT World.

“The ‘blast’ generates intense heat and massive pressure waves that last longer than those of conventional explosives, creating a vacuum effect that can cause severe injuries that are difficult to treat.”

Van Coller, who has special expertise on the legality of the use of thermobaric weapons, adds that such weapons are particularly devastating in buildings and underground structures, where reflected pressure waves multiply their force, making it difficult to confine damage to military targets and increasing the risk to civilians.

These bombs work differently from regular explosives. They release clouds of combustible particles first, then ignite them. The result is a pressure wave and a fireball that can reach 2,500 to 3,000 degrees Celsius.

When used against humans, thermobaric weapons can cause multiple complex and severe injuries due to primary blast effects, including barotrauma to the lungs and other organs, according to van Coller.

“They can also inflict secondary injuries from shrapnel and debris, tertiary injuries such as blunt trauma from being thrown by the blast, and quaternary injuries, including burns from intense heat and the inhalation of toxic fumes,” he adds.

According to reports, Israel has used several weapons that fit this description, including the MK-84 bomb, the BLU-109 bunker buster and the GBU-39 glide bomb. That last one was used in the al Tabin strike, and it's basically designed to keep buildings standing while destroying everything inside through heat and pressure.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor flagged similar cases back in 2023 and 2024. The investigators documented victims who appeared to have melted or turned to ash after residential buildings were bombed.

“In confined spaces, the heat and pressure can thus cause severe burns, crush injuries, and disintegration of soft tissues. Bodies may be incinerated, fragmented, or rendered unrecognisable, and in some cases, only small remains or traces are found,” says Van Coller.

“However, ‘vaporisation’ is not an entirely accurate term to describe the effects of thermobaric explosions on the human body, as this term implies that the tissue is converted entirely into gas, leaving no physical remains.”

“The more appropriate term from forensic and medical literature is ‘incineration’, ‘fragmentation’, or ‘obliteration,’” he adds.

Incendiary weapons and white phosphorus

Incendiary weapons are another category that's been documented in Gaza. 

“These munitions are designed primarily to set fire to objects or cause burn injuries to people through the action of flame, heat, or both, produced by a chemical reaction,” van Coller says.

“Common examples include napalm, thermite, and white phosphorus. These weapons contain chemicals that ignite and burn at extremely high temperatures for a prolonged period when deployed, thereby possibly causing secondary fires that spread to surrounding areas.”

“International humanitarian law places strict restrictions on the use of incendiary weapons, especially in populated areas, to protect civilians from their devastating effects.”

These restrictions emanate from Protocol III of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), which prohibits making civilians or civilian objects the target of attack using incendiary weapons in all circumstances.

Verified video footage and eyewitness accounts indicate that Israeli forces used white phosphorus during their genocide in Gaza and attacks on southern Lebanon in 2023. 

The material showed repeated airbursts of artillery fired white phosphorus over the Gaza City port and rural areas near the Israel-Lebanon border, dispersing burning particles across wide areas.

When it comes into contact with skin, it causes severe burns that are difficult to treat and can continue burning deep into tissue. Survivors often face long-term medical complications. 

Indiscriminate, disproportionate harm

Thermobaric weapons aren't banned entirely. But that doesn't mean using them is legal.

"Thermobaric weapons are not per se prohibited under international law," Van Coller says. 

"However, their use must be evaluated against the principles of proportionality and distinction. This means assessing whether the attack is directed at a legitimate military target and whether the expected civilian harm is excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage."

But here's the critical point that cannot be overstated: those principles about proportionality and unnecessary suffering only apply when you're targeting combatants. 

Civilians should never be intentionally targeted at all. Van Coller emphasises that the legal framework for assessing "unnecessary suffering" assumes you're fighting other fighters, not bombing families in their homes.

When Israel drops these weapons on densely populated neighbourhoods where it knows families are sheltering, it's not a question of proportionality or distinction. It's deliberate harm against civilians. 

That's a war crime, and part of Israel's ongoing genocide.

In theory, one could use thermobaric weapons legally against clear military targets if one can take precautions to protect civilians. In practice, it's nearly impossible to comply with those principles when you're dropping these bombs in densely populated cities.

Israel’s killing of more than 72,000 Palestinians, wounding of over 171,000 others, and widespread destruction of 90 percent of civilian infrastructure are already clear evidence that the principle of proportionality isn’t being followed. 

Thousands of people are still missing, either buried under debris or reduced to traces so minimal they can't be identified.

These findings come despite the International Court of Justice ordering provisional measures and despite an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court against Israel's prime minister. 

The disappearance of bodies creates another problem for accountability. These weapons destroy physical evidence so completely that identifying victims, confirming how they died, and collecting proof of unlawful use becomes extremely difficult.

Van Coller poses what he describes as “the ultimate question" on the issue: “whether one method of harming humans with the use of a particular weapon, such as a thermobaric weapon, is inherently more inhumane and thus unacceptable, as opposed to the harm caused by another weapon, such as a conventional explosive weapon."