Netanyahu says Israel controls 60% of Gaza, aims to expand to 70%: Report

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged Thursday that Israel currently controls 60% of the Gaza Strip and signaled plans to expand it further to 70%.

According to Israel’s Channel 12, Netanyahu said during a seminar in the Jordan Valley: “We currently control 60% of the Gaza Strip, and my directives are to move toward controlling 70%.”

He did not elaborate on how such plans would be implemented.

The Israeli army announced in October last year that it controlled 53% of the Gaza Strip after redeploying to the so-called “yellow line” under the first phase of US President Donald Trump’s plan to end the war in Gaza.

The arrangement envisioned further Israeli withdrawals under the second phase, launched in January. The “yellow line” refers to a temporary separation zone in eastern Gaza dividing areas under Israeli military control from areas where Palestinians are allowed to remain.

But Palestinian sources say that the boundary has been steadily pushed westward in recent months.

Bassem Naim, a senior Hamas official, told Anadolu that Israel has shifted the line by an additional 8% to 9% into Gaza’s territory, raising the area under Israeli control to more than 60%.

The change has reduced the space available to Palestinians to roughly 38% of the enclave, intensifying an already severe humanitarian crisis.

Israel launched a genocidal war in Gaza in October 2023, killing more than 72,000 Palestinians and injuring over 172,000 others, most of them women and children, according to Palestinian figures.

*Writing by Rania Abushamala in Istanbul.