DUBAI — More than half of the Gaza Strip is no longer accessible to Palestinians as Israel's military takes over larger areas of the territory and absorbs them into what it calls security zones along all of the territory's borders.
Nowhere is this more visible than in southern Gaza, where Israel's defense minister says the military is seizing an area once home to a quarter-million people and turning it into a buffer zone. The move cuts off the Palestinian border city of Rafah — and indeed the whole of the Gaza Strip – from neighboring Egypt.
Israel says its war — which Gaza health officials say has killed nearly 51,000 Palestinians — is to pressure Hamas to release the remaining hostages among the 251 taken in the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack. That Hamas-led attack killed almost 1,200 people in Israel, according to Israeli authorities.
The takeover of southern Gaza changes its borders and fundamentally alters its map, surrounding the territory by Israel from all sides. Before the war, Gaza's southern border with Egypt was the only crossing not solely controlled by Israel.
Rafah was also a shelter during the first months of the war for more than a million Palestinians and served as a lifeline for aid coming in from Egypt. It's also where some people were able to leave Gaza, including those needing medical evacuation.
Israel's military is tightening its control over Gaza, particularly in the south, after saying months ago that Hamas had been defeated there. Its return to war has sparked criticism within Israel, including among reservists unwilling to report to duty.
Israel's takeover of southern Gaza alters its map
In a visit to Rafah last week, Defense Minister Israel Katz told soldiers the entire southern swath would be turned into a buffer zone.
"All of Rafah will be evacuated and there will be a security zone," Katz said in remarks confirmed by his office to NPR. "This is what we are doing now."
Israel's military says in addition to capturing a miles-wide area of territory in the south, it's also deepening and expanding its seizure of territory along Gaza's northern border.
In his latest statement, posted Sunday on social media, Katz said if Hamas continues to refuse Israel's terms for a hostage deal, "Gaza will become smaller and more isolated, and more and more of its residents will be forced to evacuate from the fighting zones."
Israel says that for years weapons were smuggled to Hamas in tunnels that ran under the border from Egypt into Gaza. Egypt says it destroyed those tunnels years ago.
Maps published by the Israeli military show a buffer zone in Rafah that constitutes a fifth of Gaza's territory. Israel's displacement of people from the south is one of the largest territorial evacuation orders issued by the military in 18 months of war.
Gaza's civil defense and paramedics say there are 14 families still trapped in the city of Rafah, unable to flee.
Walid al-Mughayer, a resident of Rafah, says his family was fired on by Israeli forces in the city on March 23 as they tried to heed Israeli evacuation orders. He saw a child killed and five people wounded by Israeli gunfire that day.
"We had to return home from the gunfire," he says. "For five days we had no fresh water or food … We had to drink the fluid in cans of fava beans."
He says the family eventually made it to the city of Khan Younis several days later, but don't have tents or anything to sleep on.
Israeli newspaper Haaretz notes this expansive zone being carved out in southern Gaza covers an area that's roughly 29 square miles. The newspaper reports Israeli officials have not yet decided whether the entire area will be designated a buffer zone that's off-limits to civilians, like other parts of Gaza, or whether it will be fully leveled to the ground with the entire city of Rafah wiped out.
NPR documented in January the aftermath of the military's prolonged invasion of Rafah, following its withdrawal from the city during the temporary ceasefire, from mid-January until mid-March. Most buildings had been damaged or destroyed, including its main hospital.
Israel seizes more than half of Gaza's territory
In addition to expanding its buffer zones, Israel's military is dividing Gaza through two corridors. During most of the war it had isolated northern Gaza and Gaza City from the rest of the territory with the Netzarim corridor.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced recently a second dividing line, called the Morag Corridor, that cuts off Rafah and southern Gaza from the middle of the territory and the large city of Khan Younis.
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Yaakov Garb, an environmental studies professor at Ben Gurion University in Israel, has examined the Israeli military's maps of Gaza and says approximately half the territory has been explicitly delineated as off-limits to Palestinians. He says there are additional less-explicit zones that Palestinians cannot enter, according to these maps.
In other words, Garb says, the military is adding new buffer zones within Gaza to already existing buffer zones created in the war, where "a systematic kind of leveling" of buildings can be seen in aerial and satellite photos.
He says the two military corridors that cut through Gaza have created two enclaves, amounting to about half of Gaza's territory, where Palestinians are allowed to be.
"We've 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," Garb says.
A report published last week by an Israeli group called Breaking the Silence, which collects the testimonies of Israeli military veterans, describes buffer zones in Gaza that became Palestinian death zones "of enormous proportions." The report quotes "soldiers and officers who took part in creating the perimeter" saying these border zones are not clearly marked nor defined, "putting the life of any Palestinian who crossed this imaginary line at risk."
Buildings and agricultural land were destroyed by the military, turning buffer zones into a wasteland, aerial photos show and soldiers say in the report.
When asked for comment on the soldiers' testimonies, the military replied that it acts in accordance with international law. It says these buffer zones aim "to prevent the enemy from carrying out offensive terrorist activities" against Israel.
The United Nations estimates hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been newly displaced since Israel went back to war on March 18. Most are living in makeshift, flimsy tents, bombed-out schools or in damaged buildings. There's also been a siege on Gaza for nearly six weeks, with Israel barring the entry of all goods, including food, medical supplies and fuel.
Since the ceasefire collapsed a month ago, Gaza's health ministry says more than 1,600 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli airstrikes and attacks, most of them women and children.
Israel's return to war months after saying Hamas brigades were defeated sparks dissent
Several thousand current and former reservists, pilots, military doctors, intelligence officials and others in security in recent days published open letters last week calling for a change of course in the war and the immediate return of hostages. The letters accuse Israel's far-right government of favoring its own narrow political interests over the country's security. Tens of thousands of Israelis have also protested the return to war, saying it endangers the hostages' lives in Gaza.
The first group of reservists in the Air Force whose letter sparked others were dismissed from serving. In a statement, Netanyahu has described them as a "radical fringe group," accusing them without proof of receiving foreign funds.
He said the letters "were written by a small handful of weeds, operated by foreign-funded organizations whose sole purpose is to topple the right-wing government."
Israel estimates 24 hostages are believed to still be alive in Gaza. Most of the 251 hostages taken from Israel in the Hamas-led attack have been freed in negotiated exchanges during temporary ceasefires. Hamas says it's willing to release all hostages if Israel agrees to permanently end the war. Israel's government has refused, saying it wants Hamas eliminated and disarmed.
Anas Baba reported from Gaza City.
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