On November 19, the Israeli army claimed that an armed man in Rafah attacked Israeli forces. Israel carried out several airstrikes across different parts of the Gaza Strip in response to the alleged attack, killing 33 Palestinians, including 12 children.
But Israel didn’t stop at escalating from the air; Israeli vehicles also advanced into some of the eastern parts of Gaza City, including the al-Nazzaz area, Baghdad Street, and the Shuja’iyya neighborhood. These were the same areas to which displaced residents had returned after the ceasefire, only to be surprised by the Israeli vehicles that they now found in their midst.
What shocked them most, however, was that Israeli forces brought with them the same yellow concrete blocks that demarcate the so-called “Yellow Line” — the mostly invisible and supposedly temporary withdrawal line that cuts Gaza in half.
About 53% of the Strip falls under Israeli military control, where almost no Palestinians reside, and where any Palestinian who wanders near or unwittingly crosses into is shot and killed on sight. This is the part of Gaza demarcated by the “Yellow Line.”
The remaining 47% of Gaza falls under the de facto control of Hamas, housing almost all of the Strip’s some 2 million people. This area continues to be blockaded by Israel, which has prevented the full entry of humanitarian aid in violation of the terms of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire.
But now the Yellow Line is shifting. Starting on November 19, Israeli forces have continued to expand the areas where they operate, moving the line deeper into areas controlled by Hamas, in some places by about 500 meters, according to the Gaza Government Media Office. Since then, the Israeli army has only further expanded its area of control.
Earlier this week, the Israeli army’s Chief of Staff, Eyal Zamir, said in a statement that the Yellow Line is now Israel’s new border and a “forward defensive line” for Israeli communities.
The military chief’s statement explains the Israeli army’s activities in the preceding several weeks: Israeli forces have been systematically bulldozing and detonating the houses and buildings still standing on its side of the Yellow Line, effectively creating a flattened buffer zone and guaranteeing that Palestinians would no longer be able to return to homes that had briefly remained standing immediately after the ceasefire.
Omar al-Ashi, 27, a resident of Shujai’yya, returned to the rubble of his destroyed home in the western part of the neighborhood. He and his family of 11 settled under the remains of their destroyed home, which was unfit for habitation.
“We waited a long time to return to these areas, but we were surprised that during the night, Israeli vehicles advanced toward our homes,” al-Ashi told Mondoweiss. “In the morning, we found that the Yellow Line had moved a considerable distance in our direction. Then Israeli drones dropped leaflets ordering us to evacuate and move away from the line.”
When the army rolled in on the night of November 19, al-Ashi says that the Israeli vehicles fired tank shells in the area, while quadcopter drones opened fire on the displaced. Al-Ashi added that he and his family hid all night to avoid being targeted. At first light, they gathered what belongings they could from amid the rubble of their home and fled, he recounts.
In the weeks that followed, former residents of al-Shuja’iyya continued to report the noticeable advancement of Israeli military vehicles in the area. Several residents living near the new area brought under the Yellow Line told Mondoweiss that they witnessed bulldozers demolishing buildings from a distance.
Hamas’s civilian government said that its bodies have monitored and documented Israel’s violations of the ceasefire during its first 60 days, recording 738 violations, according to Ismail al-Thawabta, the Director of the Gaza Government Media Office.
This includes 205 instances of direct firing on civilians, 37 ground incursions into residential areas, 358 instances of aerial bombardment, and 138 instances of demolitions, Thawabta told Mondoweiss, pointing out that these violations have claimed the lives of 383 Palestinians and injured 980 others. The Israeli army has also made 43 arrests within Gaza during this period, Thawabta added.
New reality in Gaza is a ‘second Nakba’
Following Zamir’s statement on Sunday, a source in Gaza’s civil government, who spoke to Mondoweiss on the condition of anonymity, said that the Israeli military chief’s words were “legally void and to be rejected at the national level.” The civil government source added that the statement was the formalization of Israel’s attempt to “re-engineer Gaza’s geography through military force.”
“This proposal reflects a colonial mindset that seeks to impose coercive realities on the ground that contradict the established legal status of the Strip as occupied Palestinian land, over which the occupation has no right to redraw borders or seize any part of,” the official said.
Azmi Issa, one of the displaced residents in western Gaza City, told Mondoweiss that if Zamir’s statements are true, this would constitute a “second Nakba” for Palestinians.
“Where will we go then? Will we continue to live in tents for the rest of our lives? Will we raise our children in worn-out tents, suffering in both summer and winter?” Issa asked. “If this is implemented, all those who signed and guaranteed the ceasefire agreement will be complicit.”
“President Trump promised us peace. Where is this peace if we cannot return to our homes?” he added. “President Trump must personally intervene and prevent the implementation of such Israeli statements.”
Other residents whose homes now lie beyond the yellow concrete blocks say that every time they visit the areas near their old neighborhoods, they find that more buildings have been destroyed since the last time they came, confirming that the Israeli army has continued to carry out demolition operations.
Samar al-Haj, whose home is located in Jabalia refugee camp beyond the Yellow Line, constantly tries to visit her home to retrieve what she can. Every time she goes, she says that she notices new homes have been destroyed.
“They were still intact after the ceasefire,” she told Mondoweiss. “I try to go once a week. The first time I went, many homes inside the Yellow Line were still standing. Weeks later, I returned and saw those same homes completely flattened.”
“And weeks later, I saw other homes from afar being destroyed. The detonation and demolition of the homes inside the Yellow Line never stopped during the ceasefire,” al-Haj added.
“The world can’t be this unjust, to deprive us of returning to our homes,” she continued. “We won’t be able to go on with the deadly overcrowding on this side of the Strip.”
Al-Haj notes that if these circumstances continue, Gaza will witness an “explosion.”
“This explosion will harm Israel first, because we cannot endure injustice for long,” she said. “We Palestinians are known for rising up against injustice.”
“If Israel wants a new Intifada against the occupation, then let them keep this Yellow Line,” she added. “The hundreds of thousands who lost their homes and lands beyond the Yellow Line will one day rise up and storm this army to reclaim their homes.”
Tareq S. Hajjaj
Tareq S. Hajjaj is the Gaza Correspondent for Mondoweiss and a member of the Palestinian Writers Union. Follow him on Twitter/X at @Tareqshajjaj.
Re the second Nakba, it’s happening slowly in the West Bank as well:
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has earmarked 2.7 billion shekels (about $843 million) over the next five years to expand illegal settlement activity in the occupied West Bank, in what local media described as a form of “de facto annexation.” …The daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported Monday that the funds, designated for building new settlements, opening access roads, strengthening security and formalizing land records, represent an unprecedented allocation….Under the plan, Israel will establish “absorption clusters” – sites of 20 mobile homes each – allowing illegal settlers to move in and form new settlement nuclei.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20251209-israels-extremist-finance-minister-allocates-843m-to-expand-west-bank-settlements/
Jonathan Cook: Israel’s Biggest Con
December 12, 2025
Israel has created a false death toll debate that relates only to those who were killed directly by its bombs and gunfire — not the genocide it is waging by other means.
By Jonathan Cook
“The biggest con trick Israel has managed to pull off over the past two years is imposing entirely phoney parameters on a “debate” in the West about the credibility of the death toll in Gaza, now officially standing at just over 70,000.
It is not just that we have been endlessly bogged down in rows about whether Gaza’s medical authorities can be trusted, or how many of the dead are Hamas fighters. (Despite Israeli disinformation campaigns, the Israeli military itself believes more than 80 per cent of the dead are civilians.)
Or even that these “debates” always ignore the fact that, early on, Israel wrecked Gaza’s capacity to count its dead by destroying the enclave’s governmental offices and its hospitals. The 70,000 figure is likely to be a drastic under-estimate.
No, the biggest con trick is that Israel has successfully penned us all into a “debate,” one entirely divorced from reality, that relates only to those killed directly by its bombs and gunfire.
The truth is that far, far larger numbers of people in Gaza have been actively killed by Israel not through these direct means but through what statisticians refer to as “indirect” methods.
These people were killed by Israel destroying their homes and leaving them with no shelter. By Israel destroying their water and electricity supplies and their sanitation systems. By Israel levelling their hospitals. By Israel starving them. By Israel creating the perfect conditions for disease to spread. The list of ways Israel is killing people in Gaza goes on and on.
Imagine your own societies levelled in the way Gaza has been.
How long would your elderly parents survive in this hellscape?
How well would your diabetic child fare, or your sister with asthma, or your brother with cancer?”
https://consortiumnews.com/2025/12/12/jonathan-cook-israels-biggest-con/
As of early December 2025, more than 70,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli military action in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023. Additionally, over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank during the same period.
Casualties Breakdown (since October 7, 2023)
These figures, reported by sources including the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the Gaza Health Ministry, represent direct deaths from violence. Some studies suggest the total death toll, including indirect deaths from related health crises, may be higher.
Exploiting a Massacre to Cover Up a Genocide
December 15, 2025
Zionists have wasted little time blaming anti-genocide activists for the horrendous attack on innocent people in Sydney, Australia on Sunday, in order to obscure Israel’s ongoing crimes in Gaza, writes Joe Lauria.
“The 15 innocent victims killed in Sunday’s terrorist attack on a Hanukkah party at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia are being exploited by extreme Zionists in a bid to distract from Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Their memories are being used by the likes of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli as well as Australian officials, sections of the media and members of the public.
Instead of putting the blame on the only known perpetrators police have identified so far — the father and son shooters Sajid and Naveed Akram — Zionist extremists are implicating innocent citizens who have dared protest Israeli atrocities.
Addressing Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Netanyahu said: “I called upon you to replace weakness with action, appeasement with resolve. Instead, prime minister, you replaced weakness with weakness and appeasement with more appeasement.”
He said Albanese “did nothing to stop the spread of antisemitism in Australia, you did nothing to curb the cancer cells that were growing inside your country.”
Netanyahu said he wrote to Albanese earlier this year because his “call for a Palestinian state pours fuel on the antisemitic fire. It rewards Hamas terrorists. It emboldens those who menace Australian Jews and encourages the Jew hatred now stalking your streets.”
In response to Netanyahu, Albanese vowed to “eradicate” hatred of Jews. “We will do whatever is necessary to stamp out antisemitism,” he said on Monday. “It is a scourge and we will eradicate it together.”
But how exactly can a government end a vile belief that some people hold? It cannot be legislated or beaten out of them. And how might the anti-semitism of other Australians be responsible for the anti-semitism or other motive of the shooters, about which police have so far said nothing?
The answer is that Netanyahu doesn’t want Albanese to “end” anti-semitism — which he can’t — but to end the protests against Netanyahu’s genocidal rampage in Gaza, which have been falsely labeled anti-semitic.”
https://consortiumnews.com/2025/12/15/exploiting-a-massacre-to-cover-up-a-genocide/
Luckily there is a cure for the existence of the yellow line. And it starts with the Palestinians doing what is expected – return of the deceased hostages.