Gaza Herald_ Israel’s top military commander has now said out loud what Palestinians and critical analysts warned from day one: the “yellow line” in Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan is not a temporary buffer, but a new colonial border imposed by force. It is a line drawn to fracture Gaza, seize its land, and entrench Israeli domination under the guise of a ceasefire.
By declaring this partition a permanent “defensive frontier,” the Israeli army has stripped away the last pretence that Gaza is not under reoccupation. Meanwhile, more than two million Palestinians remain confined, starved, and uprooted, pressed into a shrinking strip of land, watching their homeland carved apart in real time.
During a visit with Israeli reservists in northern Gaza, Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir declared that Israel intends to remain in its current military positions indefinitely. These zones, which include more than half the territory, most of Gaza’s farmland, and the vital Rafah crossing with Egypt, are now being defined by Israel as a new sovereign boundary.
Zamir called the “yellow line” “a new border line … a forward defensive line for our communities and a line of operational activity.”
An official military transcript confirms that Israel sees this line as a lasting frontier, not a temporary buffer.
A Gaza Reduced to a Coastal Cage
Israel’s advance and its forced evacuations have emptied much of eastern Gaza of Palestinians. Nearly the entire surviving population, more than 2 million people, is now herded into a narrow belt of coastal sand dunes smaller than Washington, DC. This forced mass displacement stands in direct contradiction to the ceasefire agreement signed in October, which explicitly commits Israel not to occupy or annex Gaza.
Yet the army’s own leadership is now describing a permanent military hold over vast areas of the territory.
Contradictions With Trump’s Ceasefire Plan
Trump’s 20-point agreement states that Israeli forces must “progressively hand over” Palestinian territory to an International Security Force (ISF) and eventually “withdraw completely,” aside from a minimal perimeter near the border.
But Zamir’s comments suggest otherwise, and the Israeli government has refused to clarify whether the general’s statements represent official policy. A government spokesperson claimed that the deployment is still “consistent” with the ceasefire terms, while simultaneously accusing Hamas of violations.
The agreement ties Israel’s withdrawal to the “demilitarisation of Hamas,” yet offers no mechanism, timeline, or enforcement structure, effectively allowing Israel to delay indefinitely.
No International Force, No Real Path to Withdrawal
Although the UN has formally approved the creation of the ISF, no country has agreed to contribute troops. Several states expressed theoretical interest, but none are willing to send soldiers to potentially confront Hamas or become entangled in Israel’s military occupation. The Trump administration continues to pressure allies, but the ISF remains an empty shell on paper.
On the ground, Israel is entrenching its presence. New concrete military outposts have been built along the “yellow line,” which soldiers enforce as a lethal boundary even under a ceasefire. The line itself is not consistently marked, yet Israeli troops have repeatedly shot and killed Palestinians, including children, whom they claim crossed it.
Satellite imagery reveals that Israeli forces have even shifted some boundary markers hundreds of meters beyond the areas stipulated in the ceasefire maps, expanding the occupation further into Gaza’s land.
US Planning Documents Envision a Permanently Divided Gaza
Leaked US military planning documents obtained by The Guardian reveal that Washington is preparing for a long-term partition of Gaza, with one American official bluntly calling any future reunification of the Strip merely “aspirational”.
According to these documents, Gaza would be divided into a so-called “green zone” placed under Israeli and international military control, where only limited reconstruction would be permitted, and a “red zone” that would be left in ruins and rendered uninhabitable for the foreseeable future.
This blueprint mirrors Israel’s on-the-ground strategy: fragmenting the territory, shrinking Palestinian living space, and turning large parts of Gaza into a militarised wasteland.
