Gaza (QNN)- ICC-wanted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel has no intention of withdrawing from territory occupied by its forces in Gaza, confirming that Israeli forces now control 60 percent of the enclave and threatening that “more is to come” during a visit near Gaza’s so-called “Yellow Line.”
“We control the territory here,” Netanyahu said during the visit near the so-called “Yellow Line”, in a Hebrew-language video message sent by his office.
He said that the Israeli border towns of Ashkelon, Sderot, Netivot, and several kibbutzim can be seen “in every direction” from the post following Israel’s massive destruction of the enclave.
“We are not withdrawing. We are staying on this line. We control 60% of the Strip. And there is still more to come.”
It was the first time Netanyahu has visited the war-shattered territory since the so-called US-backed ceasefire came into effect in October 2025.
The Yellow Line is a non-physical demarcation line separating the Israeli occupation forces deployment from certain areas of Gaza, while occupying more than half of the Strip. The line divides Gaza into two zones: an eastern area under Israeli military control and a western area where Palestinians live, were forcibly displaced to, and are under constant Israeli threat of attacks.
In May,during an interview at a conference in the occupied West Bank, the ICC-wanted Israeli Prime Minister said, “We are now in 60% of the territory of the Gaza Strip. We were at 50%. We moved to 60%.”
When someone in the audience shouted that Israel should take the entire besieged enclave, Netanyahu said “we are going in order”, according to The Times of Israel.
“My directive is to move to — take it step by step — first of all 70. Let’s start with that.”
The Israeli military is quietly constructing a miles-long earthen barrier that separates the more than 50% of the Gaza Strip it occupies from the rest of the devastated territory, according to Haaretz and The Associated Press, citing satellite imagery. The move further entrenches the division of the tiny Palestinian enclave while confining more than two million Palestinians to ever-shrinking areas.
In late April, the Israeli military issued maps to international aid groups that showed the forces already controlling approximately 64% of Gaza by expanding the so-called “yellow line” westward across Gaza in the seven months since the ceasefire.
Hamas said Israel’s moving of the line “constitutes an explicit and ongoing undermining of the ceasefire agreement, a serious violation of its provisions, and an exposed attempt to impose new facts on the ground by force, with the aim of entrenching military control over the Strip and undermining any real chance of stabilizing the situation or making de-escalation efforts succeed.”
Nickolay Mladenov, a Bulgarian diplomat who serves as the official in charge of implementing the agreement, said that the “yellow line” could turn “into a fence or wall, a permanent separation of Gaza.”
There has been also a spike in Israeli attacks in the war-torn Strip despite the ceasefire which took effect in October.
Over 1,330 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip since the US-backed ceasefire came into effect.
The Ministry said the overall death toll from Israel’s war on Gaza has also surpassed 73,470.
Israel has violated the ceasefire more than 3,700 times, according to the Gaza Government Media Office.
Apartment buildings, markets, vehicles, and cafés have continued to come under attack. In some cases, families received displacement orders only minutes before their homes were bombed, while many others received no warning at all.
United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk condemned Israel’s attacks in the Gaza Strip, saying that “the unrelenting pattern of killings” reflects Israel’s “sweeping impunity”.
“Palestinians are still being killed and injured in what is left of their homes, shelters and tents of displaced families, on the streets, in vehicles, at a medical facility and a classroom,” Turk said.
“We mourn as Gaza reaches yet another tragic milestone … Thousands more people who were told the worst was over are still burying their loved ones,” said Fikr Shalltoot, Gaza director at Medical Aid for Palestinians.
Doctors Without Borders, known as MSF, said it has been “over 1,000 days since Israel's genocide in Gaza began, and the collective punishment of Palestinians continues to this day. Amidst a so-called ceasefire, the world has normalised seeing Palestinians being maimed and killed daily in their tents, in hospitals, and on the street.”
During a visit to the Gaza Strip in December, the Israeli military’s chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, said unequivocally that the “Yellow Line” is “a new border line”.
Haaretz previously reported that the Israeli military is turning the “yellow line” into a physical border, despite it being initially intended as a temporary demarcation. The report added that there is currently no detailed mechanism regulating a withdrawal from it.
Muhammad Shehada, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said: “Netanyahu is now declaring the whole Trump deal, the framework for Gaza, to be null and void. That’s what it means in a nutshell. There’s no other way to spell it out.”
Israeli forces have systematically destroyed the remaining buildings in their zone, so its expansion to 70% of Gaza would mean that the 2.2 million Palestinians who have survived the war would be crammed into less than a third of their original territory, which was already overcrowded.
“The conditions there are already appalling. It is the single most overcrowded place on the face of the planet,” Shehada said.
“Every square metre has another displaced family, another makeshift tent, or some sort of improvised shelter on it. So it would be a death sentence for a lot of people who physically have no place to go.”
Netanyahu’s Wednesday remakrs came as Israel's Defense Minister said Israel had plans to forcibly displace Palestinians from the Gaza Strip but was waiting for the United States to figure out where to take them.
"There is no real solution for Gaza in the end without this migration," Israel Katz told a conference hosted by Israeli news site Ynet and newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth on Wednesday
The Israeli occupation government "is organized and prepared to get them out — by sea, by air, by every way possible," he said.
Netanyahu, facing tight elections in October, last month rejected a proposal for advancing to the next stage of Trump’s plan to end the genocide in Gaza after Hamas responded to it positively.
