Israel now controls over 50% of Gaza; Trump’s Riviera plan on as Netanyahu goes deeper into Strip

In the weeks since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu renewed the war in the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces have occupied more than 50 per cent of the strip and are increasing their occupation by the day, according to an analysis.

Even though the occupation has been presented as a way of cornering terrorists, the way the Israeli forces have operated in Gaza lately suggests that the occupation is more about laying groundwork for the implementation of US President Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza.

Earlier this year, Trump announced that the United States would annex Gaza, expel all Palestinians, and turn it into the “Riviera of the East”. Netanyahu has endorsed Trump’s plan and has said that he would not end the war in Gaza unless all Palestinians are expelled from the strip.

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Observers have said that Trump’s plan and Netanyahu’s apparent implementation of it amounts to ethnic cleansing as it involves the forced removal of a population from a place — a place the population considers its historic homeland.

Israel to control vast majority of Gaza: Analysis

Since mid-March when Netanyahu renewed the war, Israeli occupation of Gaza has jumped to more than 50 per cent of the area and is on its way to complete control, according to an analysis in The Jerusalem Post by Yonah Jeremy Bob.

Whether Israeli occupation stops at around 70 per cent or reaches 100 per cent is subject to debate and interpretation, according to Bob.

Israel has already expelled the majority of Palestinians from northern Gaza where it has renewed operations in recent weeks.

In northern Gaza, around 100-200,000 Palestinians lived before the ceasefire in January. After the ceasefire, hundreds of thousands of people returned to the region. Now, Bob has reported that as many as 400,000 people are estimated to have left the region in the wake of latest Israeli offensive.

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Israel on Wednesday and Thursday ordered Palestinians to move out of northern Gaza and moved southwards in light of upcoming Israeli operations.

Netanyahu is implementing Trump’s Gaza plan

Even though Israeli sources suggest that the Israeli occupation’s primary goal is to take over territory to separate civilians from Hamas and taking over food distribution services, all available indicates that the real objective is the expulsion of Palestinians and implementing Trump’s plan to take over Gaza.

In the clearest evidence of it, Netanyahu on Wednesday said that the war would not end until all Palestinians are permanently expelled from Gaza.

Netanyahu said that he was “ready to end the war” but only “under clear conditions that will ensure the safety of Israel: All the hostages come home, Hamas lays down its arms, steps down from power, its leadership is exiled from the Strip… Gaza is totally disarmed; and we carry out the Trump plan. A plan that is so correct and so revolutionary”.

In recent weeks, Israel has been flattening entire neighbourhoods in Gaza, most notably in the southernmost city of Rafah. The destruction is part of Netanyahu’s plan to make Gaza as uninhabitable as possible, so that if and when the war ends, Palestinians cannot simply live there and are forced to migrate.

Earlier this month, Netanyahu told the foreign affairs and defense committee of the Israeli parliament that Israel was destroying more and more houses in Gaza so that the strip is as uninhabitable as possible for Palestinians.

“We are demolishing more and more houses. They have nowhere to return to. The only inevitable outcome will be the desire of the Gazans to emigrate out of the Gaza Strip. Our main problem is with the receiving countries,” said Netanyahu, according to Maariv parliamentary reporter Avraham Bloch.

Soldiers and officers serving in Gaza have also confirmed this.

A soldier told +972 Magazine and Local Call, “I secured four or five bulldozers [from another unit], and they demolished 60 houses per day. A one- or two-storey house, they take down within an hour; a three or four-story house takes a bit longer. The official mission was to open a logistical route for maneuvering, but in practice, the bulldozers were simply destroying homes. The southeastern part of Rafah is completely destroyed. The horizon is flat. There is no city.”

The decision to “flatten the area” in Gaza has been a conscious, strategic call to make sure that “the return of people to these spaces is not something that will happen”, according to Yotam, a deputy company commander who served in Gaza.