JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Since Israel ended its ceasefire in Gaza last month, the military has been slicing up the territory in a move it says will pressure Hamas to release more Israeli hostages. Its latest operation cuts off an entire city in the south from the rest of the Strip. Joining us now to explain is NPR correspondent Aya Batrawy in Dubai. Hi there.
AYA BATRAWY, BYLINE: Hi, Juana.
SUMMERS: So Israel's military says it is separating all of southern Gaza from the rest of the territory. How is it doing this?
BATRAWY: So throughout the war, there had been a dividing line already separating the north of Gaza from the rest of the territory. And you might recall, you know, hundreds of thousands of people being able to return north during the ceasefire. Now there's another dividing line for the south. Now, Defense Minister Israel Katz, he met with Israeli troops in the southern city of Rafah yesterday, in Gaza, and he said the entire southern region would be turned into a security buffer zone and said, that is what we are doing now.
Now, this impacts an area that was home to around a quarter million people before the war. The takeover of the city, Juana, and its entire surrounding territory swallows a huge portion of Gaza and would fundamentally alter the map. Even when Israel had Jewish settlements in Gaza decades ago, Rafah was Palestinian. It borders Egypt, and until the war, this was Gaza's only land border not controlled just by Israel. And Israel says this is where weapons came in from, in tunnels.
SUMMERS: I would imagine that this would also impact Egypt, too. So what's their position?
BATRAWY: So these are fast-moving, and there's been no immediate public reaction to this declaration made yesterday by Israel's defense minister. But it's important to note Egypt says there are no tunnels there, that it destroyed them years ago. But Israeli troop movements throughout the war have been very concerning to Egypt. It has been building up its military presence and defenses across Gaza's border in its Sinai Peninsula, and the military is on high alert, prepared for different scenarios, including the pressure that's been building on Egypt to be part of President Trump and Israel's plan to displace Palestinians out of Gaza, which Egypt clearly rejects.
SUMMERS: Rafah was a refuge for more than a million people in Gaza during the first months of the war. But then Israel's military invaded Rafah and only during the recent ceasefire allowed Palestinians to return. So why is Israel back there now and pushing them out again?
BATRAWY: Well, when Israeli forces were in Rafah the first time, they found hostages and tunnels, and that's where they killed Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7 attack on Israel. But it also said that it had defeated Hamas there and dismantled its brigade six months ago. And so Israel's government says it's now returning to war this time to free the remaining hostages - around 20 are believed to be alive - and to eliminate Hamas. But this war aim hasn't been clearly defined. And in an open letter today, hundreds of Israeli reservists and air force members - former air force members - accuse the Israeli government of serving its own political gains, and they were dismissed from serving.
SUMMERS: Well, with Israel's forces expanding their ground operations in Gaza, how much territory does the military now control?
BATRAWY: So I posed this question to Yaakov Garb. He's a professor at Ben-Gurion University in Israel who's analyzed the military's public maps, and he puts it like this - more than half of Gaza is now inaccessible to Palestinians, and this new Rafah buffer zone constitutes a fifth of Gaza. He says the military is adding new buffer zones to already existing buffer zones that had been carved out during the first part of the war when thousands of buildings were leveled and agricultural land destroyed.
YAAKOV GARB: We shifted to a regime in which you have very extensive areas that are functioning more as large moats around shrinking enclaves of the remaining Gazan population.
BATRAWY: So as Israel continues to issue these new evacuation orders, people are being squeezed into smaller areas that are also still being bombed.
SUMMERS: That's NPR's Aya Batrawy in Dubai. Thank you.
BATRAWY: Thanks, Juana. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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