JERUSALEM – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday he had directed Israel’s military to take more of Gaza, initially by seizing 70% of the Palestinian territory, where the population is already penned into a tiny strip of land along the coast.
Israel effectively controls an estimated 64% of the tiny coastal Gaza Strip, bombarded to ruins by Israel’s two-year military assault that followed the 2023 Hamas attack on southern Israel.
Under an October U.S.-brokered truce that has failed to halt Israeli attacks or secure Hamas’ disarmament, Israeli troops were meant to withdraw to a “Yellow Line” demarcating the extent of their control. Marked on military maps, that line put Israel in control of some 53% of Gaza, with Hamas ruling the rest.