A joint report released recently by Forensic Architecture and Earshot reconstructs Israel’s massacre of aid workers in March 2025. Commencing with Israel’s first violation of the ceasefire on 18 March 2025, in which 414 Palestinians were killed, the report focuses on 23 March, when two Palestinian Red Crescent Society ambulances were headed towards Al-Hashashin, close to Rafah and the site of an Israeli airstrike. At Tel al-Sultan, Israeli forces ambushed the second ambulance, killing two aid workers. The first ambulance was then dispatched to search for the missing ambulance, along with two other PRCS ambulances. Two other UN vehicles passing by Tel al-Sultan were also ambushed by Israeli forces.

According to the report, 910 gunshots were heard in the three recordings from the night of the attack. The video retrieved from one of the victims, PCRS first responder volunteer Reefat Radwan, captured the sound of 844 gunshots fired by Israeli forces within five minutes.

A total of 15 aid workers were killed. Israeli forces destroyed all vehicles in a bid to conceal evidence of the massacre. All 15 victims were buried in a mass grave close to the site of the ambush. Besides the immediate concealment of the massacre, the report  notes that within hours, the site of the massacre was transformed into an evacuation route, complete with checkpoints for interrogating Palestinians.

However, a further transformation of the area was to occur. The report states that between 23 March and 30 May 2025, the site became one of the aid distribution sites, or kill zones, operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Fund.

Israel operates through various steps of obliteration, each one related to additional international law violations including repeated massacres.

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With the first ceasefire violation, Israel paved the way for a massacre of first aid responders. After killing 414 Palestinian civilians, Israel executed 15 aid workers. With each massacre, the previous becomes less nuanced in a fast paced genocide such as the one Israel inflicted on Gaza. With aid workers, the case is always more amplified. However, Israel also sought to obliterate evidence not only by concealing the mass grave beneath the so-called aid distribution hubs, but by perpetuating further massacres on the site.

This process reflects Israel’s colonial annihilation throughout the decades. If one considers the 1948 Nakba and related massacres, mass graves may still be undiscovered under the infrastructure of Israel’s colonial enterprise. The joint report by Forensic Architecture and Earshot not only establishes the details and corroborates witness statements with reconstruction of the massacre and the geographical data. It also allows for reflection on the past and what the international community allowed to unfold in Palestine. With sophisticated methods of analysis such as what is now available, what would the 1948 Nakba look like? If we had more visibility of what the Nakba looked like, how much more would the international community be accountable for, in its ethnic cleansing complicity with Zionism?

And yet, despite evidence of this massacre in Tel al-Sultan, mapped, reconstructed and corroborated, impunity remains at the highest levels. Spoken for, or unspoken for, Palestinians have faced decades of repeated obliteration. History repeats itself and even when it is mapped, it is ignored, for Israel’s benefit.

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