Israel already occupies 60% of the Gaza Strip

Jerusalem“In Gaza, right now, we no longer control 50%, but 60%”. With this sentence, uttered during the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly verbalized what various humanitarian organizations, geospatial experts, and Israeli media had been denouncing for months: Israel is systematically changing the map of Gaza despite the ceasefire pushed by the United States in October 2025.

The statements confirm a progressive occupation of the Strip that goes beyond what the truce agreement established. When the ceasefire began, the Israeli army controlled approximately 53% of the Strip. The army established a kind of military border which it dubbed the “yellow line”, separating the area controlled by Israeli troops from the areas where the Palestinian population could continue to live. According to the initial terms of the agreement, Israel was to withdraw behind this line. But on the ground, reality has evolved in the opposite direction.

In recent months, various media outlets and human rights organizations, both international and Israeli, have documented the appearance of a new demarcation: an “orange line”. This new border would advance approximately 11% beyond the yellow line and leave nearly two-thirds of Gaza under direct or indirect Israeli control.

In January, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published a report describing the westward displacement of the yellow line. Gaza residents explained that they had woken up to discover that the line had moved overnight and that their land had come to be considered fire zones.

The new orange line

In March, another Israeli media outlet, The Times of Israel, reported that the army had discreetly sent new maps to humanitarian organizations present in Gaza. The documents showed a new restricted area marked with an orange line. The area between the two lines was subject to mandatory military coordination with Israel for any humanitarian movement. In January, Israel forced major international NGOs to withdraw their foreign staff from Gaza.

“In practical terms, this further reduces the space available for Palestinians and limits the possibility of returning to homes or lands located within these areas,” Dr. Julie Norman, a researcher at the Middle East and North Africa program at the international analysis center Chatham House, explains to ARA.

For the expert, the expansion of control lines is pushing the Palestinian population “towards an ever smaller portion of Gaza,” where more than two million people live concentrated in humanitarian conditions that “are worsening day by day, with diseases, infestations, and constant deterioration of living conditions”.

Norman believes that these transformations will hardly be reversible in the short term, even though Israel presents them as temporary measures. “I do not expect a significant withdrawal before the Israeli elections, and even then it would be very difficult to reverse this situation,” she assures.

Israel defends these areas as buffer zones intended to prevent future attacks like Hamas’s on October 7, 2023. “We know exactly what our mission is, and our mission is only one: to ensure that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel,” Netanyahu said during the same meeting.

In this context, according to the expert, Israel conditions any debate about a withdrawal from Gaza on the disarmament of Hamas, but the group “is not interested in this right now, especially in a context of ceasefire violations and in the absence of real negotiations on a political solution or Palestinian self-determination”.

Meanwhile, the humanitarian situation in the Strip continues to deteriorate. According to Doctors Without Borders, nearly 90% of Gaza's water and sanitation infrastructure has been destroyed or damaged. The NGO denounces attacks on tanker trucks, destruction of wells, and a growing shortage of essential medicines. Many families are forced to dig holes in the sand as makeshift toilets while diseases and malnutrition increase. During the first months of this year, 383 children have been admitted to Doctors Without Borders' nutritional centers, 35% of whom suffer from severe acute malnutrition.

Furthermore, according to data collected by The Times of Israel, at least 870 Palestinians have died in Israeli attacks since the ceasefire began, while four Israeli soldiers have died in Gaza in the same period.

On paper, the second phase of the agreement promoted by the US President, Donald Trump, envisaged a broader Israeli withdrawal and the start of Gaza's reconstruction in exchange for the disarmament of Palestinian factions like Hamas. But on the ground, what is emerging, for now, is another reality: a fragmented territory, delimited by mobile military lines that progressively reduce Palestinian space, while Hamas has no incentive to lay down its arms.