The Israeli military is working to transform the area between the Philadelphi Corridor and the Morag Corridor in the southern Gaza Strip, which includes the city of Rafah and its adjacent neighborhoods and constitutes one-fifth of the Strip's area, into a "buffer zone" that Israel intends to annex. This area was previously home to approximately 200,000 residents before the war on Gaza. Following Israel's resumption of hostilities last month, the military demanded that the remaining residents leave the area and head for the Khan Yunis and Al-Mawasi areas.

Since the beginning of the war, the Israeli army has refrained from including entire cities in a "buffer zone," which included areas along the Gaza Strip's border with Israel. The decision to turn the Rafah area into a "buffer zone" came after the Israeli political echelon decided to resume the war on March 18, and against the backdrop of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's statement that Israel "will take over large areas in the Gaza Strip," according to what the newspaper Haaretz reported on Wednesday, citing Israeli security sources.

This area covers approximately 75 square kilometers, representing one-fifth of the Gaza Strip's area. Isolating it would turn the Strip into an enclave within Israel, completely isolating it from the Egyptian border.

According to Israeli security sources, the goal of this plan is to exert renewed pressure on Hamas. The Israeli military believes that Hamas's leadership may be present in the Rafah area, and there is a growing realization within the military that "Israel will not receive international support, not even from the United States," for an ongoing war on Gaza. Israeli ministers' threats to block humanitarian aid to the Strip will translate into actual policy.

The Israeli army is currently expanding the "Morag Axis" by destroying buildings along it, and it will be hundreds of meters wide and even more than a kilometer wide in certain locations.

According to Israeli security sources, it has not yet been decided whether the entire area will be controlled as a "buffer zone," prohibiting civilians from entering it, as is the case in other buffer zones in the Gaza Strip, or whether all buildings there will be razed to the ground and the city of Rafah wiped out.

The newspaper noted that this plan is not limited to the Rafah area alone, and that the Israeli army is seizing positions in the "buffer zones" along the Gaza Strip's border with Israel, "as a preliminary step."

The newspaper quoted an Israeli officer who participated in the destruction of buildings in the "buffer zone" surrounding the Gaza Strip and in the "Netzarim axis" as saying, "There is nothing more to demolish in the buffer zone (surrounding the Gaza Strip), and any place in it is not suitable for human habitation, and there is no need to send a large number of soldiers to these areas."

An Israeli reserve soldier said, "The army is demolishing what it has already demolished, without anyone knowing how long this will continue, what the objective of the military operation is, or what operational achievement the forces are required to accomplish the mission," according to the newspaper.

An officer was quoted as saying, "All the houses in Gaza are on the verge of collapse. We lost many soldiers in collapsed buildings, and it took us hours to rescue them from the rubble of what had once been buildings. If the IDF commanders don't realize that soldiers are prepared to fight, but not to die in unnecessary operational incidents, then they can expect to be surprised."

According to Israeli soldiers' testimonies, the Gaza Military Division has drawn a map of areas in the "buffer zone" surrounding the Strip in red, yellow, and green colors, indicating that more than 80% of the buildings in this area have been completely destroyed. This map is updated from time to time. The colors include residential buildings, greenhouses, barns, and factories. One soldier said that this map has turned the demolition of buildings into a competition between Israeli forces.

A reserve officer in the Armored Brigade noted, "There is no clear system of open-fire instructions at any stage. We decided that any movement of people is suspicious. Find someone moving and shoot him without distinguishing between civilians and combatants. No one in the army cared about this. We decided that everyone was suspicious, and there were no signs in the area to distinguish between Palestinians" whether they were civilians or combatants.