Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has acknowledged that Israel currently occupies 60 percent of Gaza and signalled plans to expand it further to 70 percent, in defiance of the terms of a fragile ceasefire that took effect in October.
According to Israel’s Channel 12, Netanyahu said during a seminar on Thursday: “We currently control 60 percent of Gaza, and my directives are to move toward controlling 70 percent.”
He did not elaborate on how such plans would be implemented.
The Israeli army announced in October last year that it controlled 53 percent of Gaza after redeploying to the so-called “yellow line” under the first phase of US President Donald Trump’s plan to end the war in Gaza.
The arrangement envisioned further Israeli withdrawals under the second phase, launched in January.
The so-called “yellow line” refers to a temporary separation zone in eastern Gaza dividing areas under Israeli military occupation from areas where Palestinians are allowed to remain.
But Palestinian sources say that the boundary has been steadily pushed westward in recent months.
Bassem Naim, a senior Hamas official, told Anadolu that Israel has shifted the line by an additional 8 percent to 9 percent into Gaza’s territory, raising the area under Israeli occupation to more than 60 percent.
The change has reduced the space available to Palestinians to roughly 38 percent of the enclave, intensifying an already severe humanitarian crisis.
Israel launched its Gaza genocide in October 2023, killing more than 72,000 Palestinians and wounding over 172,000 others, most of them women and children.
