Israel Increases its Theft of Land in the Gaza Strip
Featured image: Map of the Yellow Line in Gaza. Source: Al Jazeera
Israel is deepening the theft of Palestinian lands by using the so called “Yellow Line” installed in Gaza.
The Yellow Line is a buffer zone, which is part of the ceasefire pact – signed nearly six month ago. This measure aimed to limit the area where the Israeli army was deployed in Gaza, from the whole territory to a part of it. This “Yellow Line” was temporary, implemented only in the first stage of the withdrawal of the Israeli army from Palestine. However, recent reports denounce how the State of Israel is using it as the new Gaza Stripe border, increasing the stealing of land and decreasing the Palestinian territory.
The buffer zone is about 50% of the Gaza Strip area, which means that today there are still several cities which cannot be reached by the Gazan population because they are under the dominance of Israeli Army, among them Beit Hanoun or Rafah.
The “Yellow Line” was not marked in the street but in maps, and the people could only know where it was depending on the presence of tanks or the army in the area. Currently, the Israeli Army has installed dozens of new military outposts, marking a new border between Palestine and Israel. The Palestinians who have tried to cross this “line”, recently marked with single concrete yellow blocks, were murdered. Since the establishment of the Yellow Line in October, over 200 Palestinians were murdered near it, in total 716 Palestinians have been murdered in this same period.
In February, the Israeli defense minister, Israel Katz, announced that they will not move “a single millimeter” until Hamas was disarmed. Meanwhile, they have continued to carry out large demolition operations with bulldozers against civilian infrastructure.
The theft of land by Israel sharpened during the latest years. Yesterday we reported on the theft of land in West Bank by approving new settlements. The amount of approved settlements these past four years have been quadruple the seize of the settlements approved from the Oslo Accords in 1993 until 2022:
