A view over ruined buildings in the northern Gaza Strip as seen from a position on the Israeli side of the border on April 2, southern Israel. Defense Minister Israel Katz has said Israel will “capture extensive territory” to be added to “buffer zones” in the Gaza Strip after the military expanded its ground assault.
Amir Levy/Getty Images
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Amir Levy/Getty Images
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.
