by Lila Li
“This is only the beginning,” warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a televised address on March 18 – the day Israel unilaterally broke the Gaza ceasefire and entered the region into a second period of war that has killed nearly two thousand in just under a month.
This was not a throwaway statement – indeed, Israel has adopted a previously-unseen military strategy in Gaza, advancing its military and political objectives at a newly blistering and shameless pace. Most recently, on April 12, the Israeli military declared it had completed its encirclement of the city of Rafah, cutting it off from the rest of the besieged territory after having forcibly displaced hundreds of thousands of people from the area. It did so by labeling the corridor between Rafah and Khan Younis a “security zone” – its so-called “Morag axis,” named after a historical Israeli settlement in the same area; the same was done to the Philadelphi corridor along the Gaza-Egypt border.
Rafah and the Philadelphi corridor are just examples of Israel’s new strategy to seize and depopulate increasingly large swathes of the Gaza Strip at a growing rate. Since March 18, Israel has expanded further into Gaza to create a mile-wide buffer zone along the shared border; all residents of this area have been forcibly displaced and all infrastructure destroyed. As of April 12, the IDF had expanded its ground incursion in Gaza City to include eastern neighborhoods. Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz has forewarned of impending further military occupation, declaring in a statement the weekend of April 12-13 that “IDF activity will soon expand strongly to additional locations throughout most of Gaza” and warning Palestinians to “evacuate the fighting zones” and begin moving westward.
Displacement and depopulation are key to Israel’s new vision of Gaza. In the past eighteen months of war, 1.9 million Palestinians—ninety percent of the population—have been displaced at least once, with nearly four hundred thousand being displaced again since March 18. In the month since, the United Nations claims two-thirds of the Strip has either been declared a “no-go” zone or placed under evacuation orders. Katz has publicly embraced and acknowledged the intent of such tactics, saying the military aims to leave Gaza “smaller” and “more isolated” to increase pressure on Hamas. Katz has further insisted in press briefings that the only thing able to stop Israeli expansion in Gaza is the release of hostages, and has reiterated his support for U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposal to expel Palestinians in Gaza to other nations.
The blind continuation of this strategy could spell destruction for both peoples – Hamas criticized the offensive, declaring on April 12 that it not only “kills defenseless civilians but also makes the fate of the occupation’s prisoners uncertain.” Both Palestinians and Israelis have grown aware of this, as protests – particularly from the latter – continue to mount.
If Israel maintains its aggression, it endangers the life of every civilian unwittingly dragged into the conflict. Before continuing to divide and weaken communities any further, it must heed the calls of its own populace to put an end to the war and restore a peace not reliant on a population’s inability to dissent.
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Lila Li is an intern at Massachusetts Peace Action.