The Israeli military has rapidly seized land in Gaza since resuming its genocidal war on March 18 and now controls more than 50% of the Palestinian territory and has created “kill zones,” The Associated Press reported on Monday.
The most significant piece of territory Israel controls is a so-called “buffer zone” along the Gaza-Israel border, an area where the Israeli military has demolished buildings and agricultural land to make it uninhabitable.
The buffer zone was initially cut about 1 kilometer into Gaza’s territory, but since March 18, the IDF has significantly expanded it and is conducting more demolitions. Some parts of the buffer zone now push as far as 3 kilometers into Gaza.
An Israeli soldier deployed with a tank squad guarding a demolition team spoke with the AP. “They destroyed everything they could, they shot everything that looks functioning … (the Palestinians) will have nothing to come back, they will not come back, never,” the soldier said.
The soldier said that Israeli bulldozers flattened land to create a “kill zone” and that anyone who came within 500 meters of the tanks would be shot, including women and children.
“I came there because they kill us, and now we’re going to kill them. And I found out that we’re not only killing them. We’re killing them, we’re killing their wives, their children, their cats, their dogs, and we destroyed their houses,” the soldier said.
The IDF has also recaptured the Netzarim Corridor, which separates northern Gaza from the rest of the Strip, another area it has made uninhabitable. Israeli media reports have said that Israeli soldiers deployed at the Netzarim Corridor had a policy of shooting and killing anyone who approached.
Yaakov Garb, a professor at Ben Gurion University in Israel, told AP that the buffer zone and the Netzarim Corridor make up about 50% of Gaza’s territory.
The Israeli military is also in the process of establishing a similar corridor in the south, between the cities of Rafah and Khan Younis, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dubbed the “Morag axis,” using the name of a Jewish settlement that was located in the area before the 2005 “disengagement.”
Netanyahu and other Israeli officials have made clear they want to control the captured territory in Gaza permanently and that the goal is the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said last month that he instructed the Israeli military to “seize additional areas in Gaza” with the goal of “permanent Israeli control of the territory.”
Hamas invited Israel into Gaza on October 7th 2023.
Hamas had to know that if they massacred enough Israelis and rounded up hundreds of hostages of all ages, that Israel would have to respond in the most aggressive manner. And then to conduct military operations and hide military assets among civilian populations just added on to Hamas's crimes.
Wow! You are full of more sh*t than a Christmas Goose.
Is that Jake…?!
Your justification for genocide is duly noted.
Your copy and paste comments are getting stale. But I'll play along.
Israel DID NOT have to respond in the most
aggressiveterroristic way. Israel CHOSE to respond that way.Sounds like a demarcation scale on surface…! Underground however is a different story…!
Israel is putting much at risk, for many… Typical…
And no one is stopping them. Certainly not the USA with Trump wanting beautiful real estate beach front property, nor Huckabee who thinks god is on their side to get rid of the none believers, to make room for Jesus to reappear.
Yes, at the moment Israel and the USA think that they ae winning. Once upon a time Russia and the USA stopped Hitler, who is going to stop the 2 mad men now?
At this point no one is stopping trump from his nutting plans to try to take over Gaza, Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal. But he will go 0 for 4 on these plans.
Like so many wars in the past, this war is taking on a life of its own. I wonder if the now dead Sinwar and friends had any idea that a President of the USA would be cheering leading the drive to remove Palestinians from Gaza when the chose to start this war?
That's Presidents. One did it with bullshit redlines. The other is doing it without bullshit redlines. The results would be similar if the cackling witch was sitting in the White House.