Netanyahu: Israel controls 60% of Gaza, aims for 70% expansion

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that Israel currently controls 60% of the Gaza Strip and has issued directives to expand that figure to 70%, according to Israel's Channel 12. He made the remarks during a seminar in the Jordan Valley but did not elaborate on how such plans would be implemented.

Strategic shift from 'yellow line'

The Israeli army announced in October that it controlled 53% of the territory after redeploying to the "yellow line" under the first phase of former US President Donald Trump's plan to end the war. The arrangement envisioned further withdrawals under the second phase launched in January, though Palestinian sources said the boundary has been steadily pushed westward in recent months.

Humanitarian impact

Bassem Naim, a senior Hamas official, told Anadolu that Israel has shifted the line by an additional 8% to 9% into Gaza's territory, reducing the space available to Palestinians to roughly 38% of the enclave. Israel launched a genocidal war in the Gaza Strip 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.