Reducing the area of Gaza and displacing its people...the most dangerous Israeli plans

A map of Israeli control in the Gaza Strip at the beginning of 2025 showed that the Israeli army occupied 36 percent of the area of the Strip. This is a dangerous indicator of Israeli intentions to continue occupying about a third of the area of the Strip in order to establish military buffer zones in which the Israeli army will remain to protect the settlements built on the lands of the Strip from resistance missiles, and to prevent a recurrence of the Al-Aqsa Flood scenario on October 7, 2023.

At the same time, it is clear from the comprehensive review of the population of historical Palestine presented by Dr. Ola Awad, head of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, on New Year’s Eve, which dealt with the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, its targeting of people, buildings and infrastructure, its turning of cities into rubble, the erasure of entire neighborhoods and the extermination of families from the civil registry, that after the martyrdom of more than 45,500 Palestinians, the presence of 11,000 missing persons and the departure of 100,000 citizens from the Strip, the population of the Strip has decreased by 6 percent, and this is another dangerous indicator.

The statement made by Eli Cohen, the Israeli Foreign Minister, after the beginning of the war that Israel's goal was not only to eliminate Hamas, but also to reduce the area of Gaza was not spontaneous. This goal has become close to being achieved by the force of the occupation, as the army is working on it. Its interpretation is that Israel seeks to keep its army in the Strip for as long as possible, in addition to the goals of establishing buffer zones and seizing large areas of the Strip's lands and occupying them. Perhaps the future goal will also be to establish settlements on them, to strengthen the settlement outposts around the Gaza Strip envelope.

In reading the statements of the former member of the political and security cabinet, Gideon Sa'ar, when he said that the war on the Gaza Strip is a lesson to anyone who deals with Israel, and that Gaza must be made to pay a price by cutting off an area from its north and south, and imposing a security cordon and a comprehensive siege, threatening that whoever starts will lose land, this is another confirmation of the Israeli intentions regarding the Gaza Strip.

Israel, whose new Defense Minister Yisrael Katz declared yesterday that it wants to reach a swap deal, is only making media statements through its officials. It is not at all interested in reaching an agreement or ending the war, because it wants to occupy the largest area of the Gaza Strip, and this is the reality of the situation today in the Strip, by dividing it into three sections, north, center and south. With the start of implementing the generals’ plan, work is also being done to isolate Jabalia from the north of the Strip and divide the north into three regions, and this is exactly what Israel seeks to implement, but that requires the expulsion and displacement of the residents of the north, and this is another dangerous plan that Israel is implementing.

The insistence of a large number of citizens in the northern Gaza Strip not to be displaced cost them harsh and unjust hunger, or brutal and horrific killing. In light of the Israeli war machine’s inability to complete the plan of displacement and expulsion, it has expanded the war of extermination and committed massacres on a daily basis. This is what Katz clearly indicated when he threatened Hamas to release the detainees, otherwise Gaza will be exposed to more disasters and sanctions.

Israel's continuous demands and appeals for our people to leave the north of the Gaza Strip for its center and south are a clear attempt to displace and expel the Palestinians. With the occupation of large areas of the north, center and south of the Gaza Strip, Israel has completed the rings of its colonial plans, which prove the truth of its quest to continue occupying the Gaza Strip and implementing the most dangerous projects to control what remains of Palestinian land and expel its inhabitants.

Who will stop the war of extermination, starvation and displacement, and who will confront the annexation and partition plans? This is a question without an answer, because the world no longer listens to Gaza, which has grown tired of knocking on the doors of calls and appeals.