{"id":168560,"date":"2026-06-20T00:35:57","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T00:35:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/168560\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T00:35:57","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T00:35:57","slug":"israel-seizes-more-land-as-it-pushes-deeper-into-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/168560\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel seizes more land as it pushes deeper into Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"\"\"<\/a>Mustafa Al-Shawa points to two yellow concrete blocks moved by the Israeli military further westward in Al-Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City on June 15<\/p>\n

ISRAEL is driving a new phase of its campaign to seize more of Gaza, pushing the \u2018yellow line\u2019 that marks the edge of its control deeper into the territory in breach of the ceasefire and stepping up attacks on the Palestinians who live along it.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the army to take 70% of the enclave.<\/p>\n

The line is marked in places by yellow concrete blocks that Israeli troops have been steadily shifting westward.<\/p>\n

Since the ceasefire took effect in October, Israel has expanded the area under its control from 53% of Gaza to well over 60%, and it is pressing further still.<\/p>\n

In the Al-Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City, residents woke on Monday to find the blocks moved at least 100 metres west, close to their homes.<\/p>\n

Mustafa Al-Shawa was woken at half past two in the morning by gunfire and the rumble of tanks. \u2018They moved the yellow line forward to the Sanafour Junction.<\/p>\n

\u2018It used to be up by Al-Shaaf Street,\u2019 he said, pointing to the blocks now sitting near his door.<\/p>\n

\u2018Enough of what is happening to us. Enough of this suffering.<\/p>\n

\u2018With nowhere left to go, leaving would only mean sleeping rough.<\/p>\n

\u2018If we leave the area we\u2019re in now, we\u2019ll end up sleeping in the streets, in filth. There is no place left. Where are we supposed to go?\u2019<\/p>\n

The blocks\u2019 move west on Friday, backed by gunfire, tanks and quadcopter attacks, sent dozens of families packing.<\/p>\n

They crammed mattresses, furniture, cookware and plastic bins onto trucks or into cardboard boxes and bags.<\/p>\n

\u2018The yellow line has destroyed us,\u2019 one man shouted as he passed.<\/p>\n

Like almost all of Gaza, Al-Tuffah is barely standing, every building damaged or destroyed, its paved streets reduced to dirt tracks between mounds of rubble and twisted steel.<\/p>\n

\u2018Last night was very, very bad,\u2019 said Nafiz Al-Ghaz, another resident. \u2018Tanks, quadcopters, gunfire. All night they were telling us, \u201cRun, run\u201d. People are fleeing, taking whatever furniture, cupboards and beds they can carry. They placed the yellow line right at the traffic junction.<\/p>\n

\u2018Where are we supposed to go? They might as well throw us into the sea and be done with us.\u2019<\/p>\n

Already one of the most densely populated places on earth before Israel\u2019s genocide began more than two and a half years ago, Gaza has been squeezed harder still.<\/p>\n

Its nearly two million people are being corralled into an ever shrinking strip of land, every standing structure packed with families while hundreds of thousands shelter in tents and tarpaulin shacks pitched wherever there is room, on streets and squares, in stadiums and along the coast.<\/p>\n

\u2018No one is paying attention to us,\u2019 said Mohammed Khalil, gathering his belongings beside a building in Al-Tuffah, his voice shaking.<\/p>\n

\u2018Every day we wish for death, to be done with this life.\u2019<\/p>\n

Israel has broken the ceasefire daily since it came into force, killing more than 1,000 Palestinians and wounding over 3,100 in routine attacks, choking off the aid the deal promised and taking more ground. Ant\u00f3nio Guterres, the UN secretary-general, told the Security Council last week that Gaza still faced \u2018profound uncertainty and immense human suffering\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u2018Violence is on the rise, with civilians killed on a daily basis,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n

\u2018Humanitarian operations remain heavily constrained. Basic human needs, for water, food, shelter and health care, are going unmet. And the Israeli government is declaring its intent to control 70% of the Strip.\u2019<\/p>\n

Monitoring of the ceasefire was handed in November to President Donald Trump\u2019s \u2018Board of Peace\u2019, authorised by the Security Council.<\/p>\n

Hamas said on Sunday that it had delivered a response, coordinated with other Palestinian factions, to a proposal put to it in April by the board\u2019s high representative, Nickolay Mladenov.<\/p>\n

Mladenov has looked past Israel\u2019s violations and pressed Hamas to disarm in full, a demand absent from the phase-one deal the movement signed in October.<\/p>\n

\u2018To the world, there is a ceasefire agreement, but in practical terms on the ground, Israel has moved toward a pattern of gradual escalation that reshapes the aggression and reshapes the genocide,\u2019 said Ahmed Al-Tannani, a writer and political analyst in Gaza.<\/p>\n

The daily killing around the yellow line, he said, ran alongside the expansion of control, continued assassinations and the bombing of civilians in their homes, and a return to the practice of emptying neighbourhoods before destroying them, including in areas west of the line.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, Israel bombed the Al-Jawazat displacement camp west of Gaza City, killing six Palestinians and wounding 20, one of many strikes far from the yellow line.<\/p>\n

\u2018Attacks are still taking place around us. Here in the Al-Jawazat camp, there have been multiple strikes on tents,\u2019 said Raed Hajjaj, who lives there.<\/p>\n

The world\u2019s attention, he said, had drifted. \u2018It\u2019s not like before, when massacres were happening continuously and the world\u2019s attention was focused on Gaza.<\/p>\n

\u2018Now, with one or two attacks, the world is occupied with other issues, the US-Iran war, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n

\u2018These things have distracted the world from us.\u2019<\/p>\n

The heaviest attacks fall on those living closest to the line, where the military has thrown up 25 kilometres of massive earth berms to cut Gaza in two.<\/p>\n

Newly built bases sit atop them like colonial forts, spotlights and watchtowers facing out over the displaced population below.<\/p>\n

The Halawa camp in Jabaliya, in the north, lies a few hundred metres from one such base, an Israeli flag flying inside it.<\/p>\n

Mohammad Al-Zaghl pointed on Monday to bullet holes torn through the tarpaulin of the makeshift bathroom he had built beside his tent.<\/p>\n

\u2018The Israelis are about 500 metres away from us,\u2019 he said. \u2018There is not just one tower, there are one, two, three. From all three directions, we cannot escape the gunfire. Every day there is shooting.\u2019<\/p>\n

Displaced from the Jabaliya refugee camp, Al-Zaghl was sitting at the entrance of his tent in January when a burst of fire hit him in the abdomen, leaving a scar along his lower back.<\/p>\n

\u2018Today it is worse than before,\u2019 he said. \u2018You hear constant gunfire, explosions, and noise.\u2019<\/p>\n

Youssef Shaman, 15, was shot from the same base in March as he went to fetch water.<\/p>\n

\u2018There was a crowd gathered around the water, and they started shooting at us from the tower,\u2019 he said. \u2018People were hit, and I was shot in my leg.\u2019<\/p>\n

The wound sits on the inside of his thigh, above the knee, an older scar marking where shrapnel struck him in an earlier airstrike that killed his brother.<\/p>\n

The shooting from the base, he and other witnesses said, had grown steadily worse. \u2018They look for someone to snipe and open fire on them,\u2019 he said. \u2018They fire at us all day long.\u2019<\/p>\n

Eight months on, Israel has faced no consequences for abandoning the ceasefire, and its violations have only sharpened as it forces Palestinians inward and takes more land.<\/p>\n

\u2018The Israeli occupation still considers the war to be ongoing, and the objectives of the war, linked primarily to achieving the strategic goal of displacing the Palestinian people, are still in place,\u2019 Al-Tannani said.<\/p>\n

\u2018The ceasefire agreement has not brought about any change for the Israeli government.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mustafa Al-Shawa points to two yellow concrete blocks moved by the Israeli military further westward in Al-Tuffah neighbourhood…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168561,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[34,37,39520,2681,498,2916],"class_list":["post-168560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-local-government","tag-migration","tag-palestine","tag-protest"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116779639591436903","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}