Jerusalem, May 28 (EFE).- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated Thursday that he has ordered the army to occupy 70% of the territory of Gaza, after Israeli troops expanded their control of the Strip in recent months.
»We are now in 60% of the territory of the Gaza Strip. We were at 50%, we moved to 60%,” he said during a forum in the occupied West Bank, after being urged by the audience to occupy the entire Strip.
“My directive is to move to – take it step by step – first of all, 70. Let’s start with that,” he added.
In mid-May, the Israeli prime minister had already celebrated that the army had expanded beyond the territory of the Strip that it came to control following the ceasefire of October 10.
At the start of the truce, it was around 52%, which has been progressively expanded in violation of the terms of the agreement.
“We are subduing Hamas. We know exactly what our mission is, and we have only one mission: to ensure that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel,» he said at the time.
During the nearly eight months since the ceasefire, the Israeli Army drew a line dubbed the “yellow line” that confined the Strip’s 2.1 million residents to less than half the territory. This demarcation was never manifested as a physical border.
The “orange line” was added to the “yellow line” in late March. According to the NGO Gisha, the new territorial demarcation serves to isolate an area of 174 square kilometers (nearly 48% of Gaza) in which the movement of international organizations and NGOs is prohibited without prior coordination with Israel.
Hamas accused Israel of moving the line, saying this “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.” EFE
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