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israel defense forces
Satellite Analysis Shows 'Overt Territorial Ambitions' of Israel in Gaza
Observers say the network of IDF bases inside Gaza is meant to facilitate Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's stated goal of taking 70% or more of the Palestinian exclave.
Combined with Israel's ever-expanding so-called "yellow line," the satellite imagery reveals at least "a systematic effort to build a sustainable, long-term military infrastructure rather than temporary observation posts," according to Al Jazeera.
(Image by Al Jazeera Open Source Unit/Creative Commons)
As Al Jazeera reported:
The geographical distribution of these 40 military outposts reveals a deliberate strategy of encirclement. The bases, connected by a network of earthen berms, trenches, and internal military roads, tightly surround Palestinian population centres from multiple directions.
This suffocating architecture severely restricts the ability of civilians to move freely or access their lands, particularly in areas abutting the Israeli deployment lines.
The expanding occupation stands in direct violation of the United States-brokered October 2025 ceasefire agreement, which was based on a 21-point peace plan proposed by President Donald Trump. The framework demanded an end to the hostilities, the immediate entry of aid, the disarmament of Hamas, and a phased Israeli withdrawal.
However, “the idea of occupation, control, and pushing borders forward has become the core of the Israeli security doctrine," Palestinian political analyst Abdullah Aqrabawi said.
In early 2024, Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza—declared that Israel would establish "full security control" over Gaza. In April 2025, he announced the creation of the so-called Morag Corridor, describing it as an additional security corridor dividing Gaza and signaling that Israel was "cutting up the Strip" to increase pressure on Hamas, which led the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
Last week, Netanyahu told an audience at a youth military academy that "we are now in 60% of the Gaza Strip, more or less." When the crowd interrupted with chants of "100%! 100%!," the prime minister replied: "Wait, let’s go in order. First 70%. Let’s start with that.”
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said last year that IDF troops were “expanding to crush and clean” Gaza while “seizing large areas that will be added to the security zones of the state of Israel for the protection of fighting forces and the settlements,” a reference to plans by far-right members of Netanyahu’s government and leaders of the settler movement for the ethnic cleansing and illegal Israeli recolonization of the Palestinian enclave.
Israel first colonized Gaza following its seizure during the 1967 Six-Day War; its settlements were dismantled in 2005 under then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon amid stalled peace negotiations during the Second Intifada, or Palestinian uprising.
Katz and other Israeli leaders advocate for a US-backed "voluntary migration" plan for Gaza's Palestinians. However, critics call voluntary migration a euphemism for ethnic cleansing, given the unwillingness of most Palestinians to leave Gaza, most of whose inhabitants are the descendants of people forcibly expelled from other parts of Palestine during the establishment of the modern state of Israel in the late 1940s.
As Israel seizes more and more of Gaza, its forces continue killing Palestinians there despite the truce. The Gaza Ministry of Health said Wednesday that at least 119 Palestinians were killed in Gaza in May, the highest monthly total recorded this year. Those slain by IDF troops include 19 children and 10 women, with Israeli soldiers saying that indiscriminate killings of Palestinian civilians continue along the ever-shifting yellow line.
According to Gaza’s Government Media Office, Israel has violated the ceasefire more than 3,005 times, resulting in more than 900 Palestinians killed and nearly 2,800 others injured since last October. Since October 2023, more than 250,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded, including thousands of people who are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble.
Wednesday's Al Jazeera report follows another analysis published last week by the network using satellite imagery to show Israel's erasure of large swaths of southern Gaza, including cities, towns, farmland, and even cemeteries in what the article's authors called an Israeli effort at "erasing geography and memory."
“Satellites photograph the destroyed buildings, but they cannot document the feeling of a human searching for their home to no avail,” Palestinian journalist Muhannad Qishta said. “The hardest thing is not the destruction itself, but the stories buried beneath it.”
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