Gaza Herald – The Gaza Center for Human Rights has warned of the escalating danger posed by Israel’s ongoing efforts to reduce the livable geographical space in the Gaza Strip through a policy of gradual land swallowing and the imposition of new realities on the ground by military force.
In a statement issued on Thursday, the center said the latest declaration by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, expanding Israeli-controlled areas from approximately 60% to 70% of the Gaza Strip, represents a serious development in the context of enforced geographic fragmentation and the creation of new buffer zones. According to the statement, this effectively deepens the separation of Palestinian civilians and advances a broader strategy of territorial isolation.
The center warned that this expansion would confine more than two million displaced Palestinians to less than 10% of the territory, especially when accounting for areas rendered uninhabitable due to widespread destruction. These include cemeteries, heavily bombarded rubble zones, agricultural land destroyed by repeated attacks, and areas designated as militarized or inaccessible.
It stressed that such conditions are part of a systematic policy aimed at reshaping Gaza’s demographic and geographic reality through a combination of siege measures, deprivation, large-scale destruction, and the blocking of reconstruction efforts, alongside continued killings and direct targeting of civilians.
The organization documented a particularly deadly airstrike on the evening of May 27, 2026, when Israeli aircraft bombed a three-story building on Omar al-Mukhtar Street in Gaza City. The building was sheltering multiple displaced families and was surrounded by densely packed tent camps. The strike killed 10 Palestinians, including five children, two women, and an elderly man, and injured around 30 others with varying degrees of severity.
The center noted that the attack came only hours after additional killings in Gaza City, reflecting an intensification of daily strikes and targeted attacks against civilians, in parallel with the shrinking of habitable space for the population.
It further stated that forcing civilians into overcrowded, isolated pockets lacking basic living conditions, while continuing bombardment, starvation conditions, denial of adequate shelter, and restrictions on humanitarian access, amounts to collective forced displacement, prohibited under international humanitarian law. It added that these actions may constitute elements of genocide under the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
The report also cited Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, who recently stated that Israel would implement a so-called “voluntary migration” plan from Gaza at a time and in a manner of its choosing, describing this as further evidence of an intentional policy framework.
The center warned that the international community’s continued treatment of these measures as ordinary military attacks effectively provides political cover for the expansion of grave violations against Palestinian civilians.
It called on the United Nations, the international community, and High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions to urgently intervene to halt territorial expansion inside Gaza, stop mass killings and forced displacement, ensure immediate international protection for civilians, and hold perpetrators accountable for serious violations of international law.
