On April 1, Avichay Adraee, the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesperson, posted on X, urging Palestinians in Rafah and in the Al-Nasr and Al-Shawka neighborhoods — both located east of Rafah — to evacuate the area and relocate to a military-designated humanitarian zone along the coast, near Khan Younis and the al-Mawasi area. In January, BBC reported that this humanitarian area had been struck by the Israeli military 97 times since May.
Following the military's issuing of evacuation orders for Rafah, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas "condemned the Israeli displacement orders as illegal and a clear violation of international law."
Haaretz, citing Israeli defense sources, said that the move aims to transform the Gaza Strip into an enclave within an enclave, surrounded by Israeli territory and cut off from Egypt.
Just a week ago, on April 2, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel is establishing a new east-west security corridor across the Gaza Strip to pressure Hamas.
Once completed and joined with the new buffer zone, Israeli military-controlled territory in Gaza will stretch from Gaza’s border with Egypt to the outskirts of Khan Younis.
Netanyahu called this new corridor the “Morag corridor,” a name that refers to a former Jewish settlement between Rafah and Khan Younis. “We are cutting up the Strip, and we are increasing the pressure step by step so that they will give us our hostages,” Netanyahu said.
The Israeli prime minister said this corridor would serve as “a second Philadelphi Corridor,” referring to a corridor on Gaza's southern border with Egypt. The Philadelphi Corridor has been under Israeli control since May of 2024.
Since November 2023, the Israeli military has also controlled the Netzarim Corridor, which cuts off the northern third of Gaza from the rest of the territory.
Know more: Alongside expanding its control over the territory, Israel has also escalated its military campaign since breaking the ceasefire on March 18, launching a wave of airstrikes across the Strip.
On Wednesday, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that at least 36 Palestinians had been killed in the previous 24 hours. According to numbers from Gaza’s Health Ministry, this brings the death toll since October 2023 to 50,846 people.
In recent days, aid organizations, including the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the World Food Program, have expressed deep concern about the availability of humanitarian aid in the territory. On March 2, ahead of its renewed offensive, the Israeli government began a blockade on the Strip.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres told journalists in New York on Tuesday that “more than an entire month has passed without a drop of aid into Gaza. No food, no fuel, no medicine, no commercial supplies. … Gaza is a killing field, and civilians are in an endless death loop.”
In response to Guterres’ comments, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Oren Marmorstein, posted on X, stating that “there is no shortage of humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip — over 25,000 aid trucks have entered the Gaza Strip in the 42 days of the cease fire. Hamas used this aid to rebuild its war machine."
