Israel continues to tighten its grip on the Gaza Strip. As a result, more and more of Gaza's 2.3 million people are being squeezed into an ever-smaller space, and the intense bombardment continues. Israel Katz, Israel's defense minister, said the army had seized large areas of territory in the southern coastal strip. In a post on the X platform, he added that "Gaza will become smaller and more isolated, and more and more of its residents will be forced to evacuate from the fighting zones". Katz called on the Palestinians to "remove Hamas" in order to "stop the war".
The Israeli government has promised to intensify its offensive and seize large parts of Gaza in order to put pressure on Hamas terrorists to release the remaining 59 hostages, 24 of whom are believed to be alive, and to accept new ceasefire conditions.
Civilians pay the price
Once again, Gaza's civilians are paying the price. Before the war, the southern Gaza Strip's Rafah governorate was home to around 200,000 people. "Rafah is almost completely destroyed: the houses and streets have been reduced to rubble and will have to be rebuilt. Now they will demolish what is left," Abdul Rahman Taha told DW. His family returned to Rafah after a temporary ceasefire was announced in January, but were forced to leave again after the Israeli military issued evacuation orders in early April. Now Taha and his family are back living in a tent in Khan Younis, in even more dire conditions.
After the first phase of the ceasefire ended in early March, the Israeli government has cut off all fuel, food, commercial and humanitarian supplies to Gaza. On Monday, the UN warned that "the humanitarian situation is currently perhaps the worst in the last 18 months of hostilities."
"Just when we thought the war was over, it has returned in full force, the bloodshed continues. Now the chaos is even greater, the internal security situation is very serious. "We are experiencing something terrible," Abu Taha added.
The 41-year-old Palestinian is worried that his hometown is now part of a "security zone." The newly created "Morag" corridor - about 12 km long from east to west - cuts off Rafah from neighboring Khan Yunis and the border crossing with Egypt. It is named after a former Israeli settlement that was demolished in 2005. And the "Netzarim" corridor in central Gaza separates the southern from the northern part of the strip. The Israeli army controls movement between the two areas with checkpoints.
Long-term control
According to human rights activists, the Israeli government appears to be laying the groundwork for long-term military control by dividing the strip into different parts through corridors and expanding the existing buffer zone along the Gaza border with Israel. Abu Taha is one of the estimated 400,000 people displaced during the latest Israeli offensive. After a ceasefire in January, hundreds of thousands of displaced people were able to return to the north, but the Israeli military is now forcing many of them to move west.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), almost 70 percent of the territory is under evacuation orders or designated as "no-go" a zone where Israeli authorities are requiring humanitarian teams to coordinate their movements. Defense Minister Katz reiterated that "voluntary crossing" to other regions would be allowed for "all who are interested" – under US President Donald Trump's controversial "resettlement plan" for all 2.3 million Gazans. According to the UN, this amounts to forced displacement.
In addition to the displacement and division of the territory, Israel is gradually expanding the already existing buffer zone in Gaza, which follows the border with Israel to the north and east, and to the south – along the border with Egypt. The organization “Breaking the Silence“ Breaking the Silence, which collects testimonies from former Israeli soldiers who served in the occupied Palestinian territories, published a report last week detailing what it calls the systematic destruction of homes, infrastructure and farmland in the buffer zone:
“We destroyed everything“
“We destroyed everything - agricultural fields, cemeteries, industrial zones, homes. The Israeli military believes this will increase their security because they will see Hamas or Islamic Jihad fighters approaching,“ said Nadav Weiman, the head of the organization, which criticizes the Israeli occupation.
A large part of the land now included in the buffer zone was previously agricultural land, which raises questions about the long-term consequences of the Israeli military's actions, such as whether Gaza will be able to produce at least some of the food it needs to feed its population.
In places, the buffer zone is up to 2.5 km wide and reaches residential areas, Lamia Bakhtiti told DW from the western Gaza Strip, where her family is staying with relatives. The 43-year-old is fighting a daily battle to provide for her family, as "there is no cleaning products on the market, no drinking water, not enough food, no gasoline, and the health care situation is just terrible". We are trying to survive for the sake of our children and in the hope of a better future," she added.
Author: Tanya Kremer