Gaza’s new Yellow Line is the latest, most egregious military demarcation in a long, cruel history of lines intended to make the lives of Palestinians impossible
THE so-called Gaza ceasefire has not produced a genuine cessation of hostilities but a strategic, cynical shift in the Israeli genocide and ongoing campaign of destruction.
Starting on Oct. 10, the first day of the announced ceasefire, Israel changed its tactics: moving from indiscriminate aerial bombardment to the calculated, engineered demolition of homes and vital infrastructure. Satellite images, corroborated by almost-hourly media and ground reports, confirm this methodical change.
As direct combat forces seemingly withdrew to the adjacent Gaza envelope region, a new vanguard of Israeli soldiers advanced into the area east of the so-called Yellow Line to systematically dismantle whatever semblance of life and civilisation remained standing following the Israeli genocide. Between Oct. 10 and Nov. 2, Israel demolished 1,500 buildings, utilising its specialised military engineering units.
The ceasefire agreement divided Gaza into two halves: one largely west of the Yellow Line, where the survivors of the Israeli genocide are confined, and a larger one, mainly to the east of the line, where the Israeli army maintains an active military presence and continues to operate with impunity.
If Israel truly harboured the intention of evacuating the area following the agreed-upon second phase of the ceasefire, it would not be actively pursuing the systematic destruction of this already devastated region. Clearly, Israel’s motives are far more insidious, centred on rendering the Strip perpetually uninhabitable.
Aside from levelling infrastructure, Israel is also carrying out a continuous campaign of airstrikes and naval attacks, relentlessly targeting Rafah and Khan Yunis in the south. Later, and with greater intensity, Israel also began carrying out attacks in areas that were, in theory, meant to be under the control of Gazans.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, at least 260 Palestinians have been killed and 632 wounded since the ceasefire supposedly came into effect.
In practice, this ceasefire amounts to a one-sided truce, under which Israel can carry out a relentless, low-grade war on Gaza, while Palestinians are systematically denied the right to respond or defend themselves. Gaza is thus condemned to relive the same tragic cycle of its violent history: a defenceless, impoverished region trapped under the boot of Israel’s military calculations, which consistently operate outside the periphery of international law.
Before the foundation of Israel atop the ruins of historic Palestine in 1948, the demarcation of Gaza’s borders was not driven by military calculations. The Gaza region, home to one of the world’s most ancient civilisations, was always seamlessly incorporated into a larger geographical and socioeconomic space.
Before the British named it the Gaza District during its rule (1920-1948), the Ottomans considered it a subdistrict (kaza) within the larger Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem — the Jerusalem Independent District.
But even the British designation of Gaza did not isolate it from the rest of the Palestinian geography, as the borders of the new district reached Al-Majdal (today’s Ashkelon) in the north, Bir Al-Saba’ (Beersheba) in the east and the Rafah line at the Egyptian border.
Following the 1949 armistice agreements, which codified the post-Nakba lines, the collective torment of Gaza, as illustrated by its shrinking boundaries, began in earnest. The expansive Gaza District was brutally reduced to the Gaza Strip, a mere 1.3 percent of the overall size of historic Palestine. Its population had exploded due to the Nakba, with more than 200,000 desperate refugees arriving. They, along with several generations of their descendants, have now been confined to this tiny strip of land for almost 80 years.
When Israel permanently occupied Gaza in June 1967, the lines separating it from the rest of the Palestinian and Arab geography became an integral, permanent part of Gaza itself. Soon after its occupation of the Strip, Israel began further restricting the movement of Palestinians, slicing Gaza into several regions. The locations of these internal lines were largely determined by two paramount motives: to fragment Palestinian society to ensure its subjugation and to create military “buffer zones” around Israeli military encampments and illegal settlements.
Between 1967 and its “disengagement” from Gaza in 2005, Israel built 21 illegal settlements and numerous military corridors and checkpoints, effectively bisecting the Strip and confiscating nearly 40 percent of its land mass.
Following the redeployment, Israel retained absolute, unilateral control over Gaza’s borders, sea access, airspace and even the population registry. Additionally, Israel created another internal border within Gaza: a heavily fortified buffer zone snaking across the northern and eastern borders. This area has witnessed the cold-blooded killing of hundreds of unarmed protesters and the wounding of thousands who dared to approach what was often referred to as the “kill zone.”
Even the sea was effectively outlawed. Fishermen were inhumanely confined to tiny spaces, at times less than 3 nautical miles, while being surrounded by the Israeli navy, which routinely shot fishermen, sank boats and detained crews at will.
Gaza’s new Yellow Line is the latest, most egregious military demarcation in a long, cruel history of lines intended to make the lives of Palestinians impossible. The current line is worse than any before it because it completely suffocates the displaced population in a fully destroyed area with no functioning hospitals and with only a trickle of lifesaving aid.
For Palestinians, who have been battling confinement and fragmentation for generations, this new arrangement is the intolerable and inevitable culmination of their protracted, multigenerational dispossession.
If Israel believes it can make the new demarcation of Gaza the status quo, the next few months will prove it devastatingly wrong. Tel Aviv has simply recreated a much worse, inherently unstable version of the violent reality that existed before Oct. 7 and its genocide. Even those not fully familiar with the deep, painful history of Gaza must realise that sustaining the Yellow Line of Gaza is nothing more than a dangerous, bloody illusion.
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Dr Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. He is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net
