Israel has dramatically expanded its presence in the Gaza Strip since the war against Hamas resumed last month. It now controls more than 50 per cent of the territory and is squeezing Palestinians over shrinking chunks of land.
The largest area the army controls is around the Gaza border, where the military has destroyed Palestinian homes, farmland and infrastructure to the point of being uninhabitable, according to Israeli soldiers and human rights groups. That military buffer zone has doubled in size in recent weeks.
Israel portrays the tightening controls as a temporary necessity to force Hamas to release the remaining hostages taken in the October 7, 2023 attack that started the war. But human rights groups and Gaza experts say the land Israel holds, including the corridor separating the territory’s north and south, could be used to impose long-term control.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last week that even after defeating Hamas, Israel would maintain security control in Gaza and force Palestinians to leave.
The destruction of homes near the Israeli border and the systematic expansion of the buffer zone has been ongoing since the war began 18 months ago, five Israeli soldiers told The Associated Press.
“They destroyed everything they could, they shot everything that looks functioning … (the Palestinians) will have nothing to come back, they will not come back, never,”a soldier who served in a tank unit guarding the demolition teams said. He and four other soldiers spoke to AP on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
On Monday, Breaking The Silence, an anti-occupation veterans group, released a report documenting the stories of soldiers in the buffer zone. Several soldiers, including some who spoke to the AP, described how the army turned the zone into a vast wasteland.
“Through widespread, deliberate destruction, the military laid the groundwork for future Israeli control of the area,” the group said.
Asked about the soldiers’ accounts, the Israeli army said it was acting to protect its country and especially to improve security in southern areas devastated by the October 7 terrorist attack that killed some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages. The army has said it does not seek to harm civilians in Gaza and respects international law.
According to Breaking The Silence, Israeli troops forced Palestinians out of settlements near the border in the early days of the war and demolished land to create a buffer zone more than a kilometre (0.62 miles) deep.
Israeli troops also seized a stretch of land across Gaza known as the Netzarim Corridor, which isolated the northern part, including Gaza City, from the rest of the narrow coastal strip, home to more than 2 million people.
When Israel resumed the war last month, it doubled the size of the buffer zone, pushing it as far as 3 kilometres (1.8 miles) deep into Gaza in some places, according to a map released by the military.
The buffer zone and the Netzarim corridor make up at least 50 per cent of the Strip, said Yaakov Garb, a professor of environmental studies at Ben-Gurion University who has studied Israeli-Palestinian land use patterns for decades.
Netanyahu said last week that Israel intends to create another corridor running through southern Gaza, cutting off the town of Rafah from the rest of the territory. Israel’s control over Gaza is even stronger when you consider the areas from which it recently ordered the evacuation of civilians ahead of planned attacks.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians lived on lands that now make up Israel’s buffer zone, an area that was key to Gaza’s agricultural production. Satellite images show once densely populated neighbourhoods reduced to rubble, as well as nearly a dozen new Israeli army outposts that have sprung up since the ceasefire.
Netanyahu lands in Washington for talks on Trump’s tariffs, Gaza war
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that on Sunday, the country’s prime minister headed to the US to meet with President Donald Trump. They will discuss the course of the conflict in the Middle East and the effects of US tariffs.
“The Prime Minister appreciates the personal and warm relationship with President Trump and thanks him for inviting him to be the first leader to meet with him after the imposition of global duties, as he did after President Trump took office,” Dmitry Gendelman, an advisor to the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, said in Telegram.
According to Gendelman, the politicians will discuss efforts to return Israeli hostages from the Gaza Strip, relations between Israel and Turkey, and the Iranian threat, among other issues. In addition, the topic of the conversation will be “opposition” to the International Criminal Court.
Donald Trump announced the imposition of tariffs ranging from 10% to 50% on goods from more than 180 countries on April 2. Tariffs on imports from Israel totalled 17 per cent. The previous time Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu met in Washington on February 4.
