[News] Slow expansion east of Gaza: Shifting the “Yellow Line” turns land into political leverage

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 Reports <https://english.palinfo.com/category/reports/>
Slow expansion east of Gaza: Shifting the “Yellow Line” turns land into
political leverage

Thursday 27-November-2025
<https://english.palinfo.com/reports/2025/11/27/352514/#>
<https://english.palinfo.com/reports/2025/11/27/352514/#>
<https://english.palinfo.com/reports/2025/11/27/352514/#>
<https://english.palinfo.com/reports/2025/11/27/352514/#>

GAZA, (PIC)

Residents of Gaza City’s Shujaiya neighborhood say they were alarmed this
week as Israeli military vehicles pushed the yellow concrete blocks markers
of the so-called “yellow line” several dozen meters deeper into their area.

Ibrahim Farhat said he panicked when he heard tanks approaching and later
saw the blocks being moved closer to his home. “They used to be about a
kilometer away. Now gunfire reaches our house. It’s a huge danger,” he said.

For Shujaiya’s residents, the sudden appearance of these yellow-painted
blocks outside their homes signals that they are now living on the edge of
an active military zone directly adjacent to the Israeli withdrawal line
defined in the first phase of the ceasefire agreement.

Among them is Salem al-Jarjawi, who had been living 700 meters from the
line in a shelter camp near Shujaiya Park. He and his family now find
themselves only steps away from Israeli vehicles that fire relentlessly
through the night.

“A week ago, we thought we wouldn’t survive until morning,” he said. “We
can’t flee again we have no strength or money left. This advance has
suffocated us: the shelling and shooting have become terrifying.”

The elderly man says his family has nowhere left to go. “We’ve fled to
every possible place. Nights feel like death. After sunset it’s total
darkness, no light, and moving around is dangerous.”

Pointing toward a nearby Israeli position, he said, “Every movement feels
monitored. The tower is aimed at us, the vehicles and drones are overhead.
Before the expansion, bombs fell farther away. Now shrapnel reaches the
camp.”

Across Shujaiya, widespread destruction is visible. An Israeli post on
Jabal al-Mantar overlooks large parts of the neighborhood, and the distance
between the shelter camp and the military site has become so small that
residents’ movement is severely restricted.

Displacement without a destination

Fadi Harara said he saw a tank and accompanying vehicles pushing the yellow
blocks forward. Like many others, he immediately decided to leave without
knowing where to go fearing troops would advance toward his home.

His neighbor, Akram Jarada, said, “I’ve been displaced 16 times since
October 7 street to street, city to city, from north to south.”

“The army wants to keep pushing toward the yellow line,” he said. “They’re
putting all of us, children, women, elderly, the sick in constant danger.”

The Israeli military says the changes amount only to “adjusting the yellow
line,” which marks the area it currently controls, which is more than half
of Gaza’s territory.

Families trapped in expanding military zones

Last Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Israel has deployed
additional forces along the yellow line.

The line marks the edge of the zone from which Israeli forces withdrew
under the truce, giving them effective control over 53–58 percent of the
Gaza Strip.

Under the ceasefire agreement brokered with the United States and others,
Israel is expected to pull back further as part of the first phase linked
to the release of detainees.

Gaza’s Government Media Office (GMO) said Israel has expanded the yellow
security zone by moving concrete blocks about 300 meters deeper into the
neighborhoods of Ash-Sha‘f, An-Nazzaz, and Baghdad Street.

In data released on November 20, the Office said the army’s incursions into
residential areas have trapped families that could not evacuate before
tanks advanced. It also noted that this expansion came just a day after 25
Palestinians were killed in airstrikes on Gaza City and Khan Yunis, another
violation of the truce.

The GMO has documented more than 500 Israeli ceasefire violations,
resulting in over 300 deaths and hundreds of injuries.

A slow, calculated strategy

Military researcher Rami Abu Zubayda says the Israeli advance east of Gaza
City is part of a slow, deliberate strategy designed to change the reality
on the ground without officially declaring new lines of deployment.

“This is not a temporary battlefield tactic,” he said. “It’s a systematic
approach to impose new facts under the cover of a ceasefire.”

He explained that Israel aims to turn the current lines into fixed
operational boundaries offering better surveillance and control keeping its
forces ready for offensive action without triggering a full-scale war.

By pushing the yellow line westward, he added, Israel seeks to widen its
security buffer inside Gaza, creating large depopulated areas that serve as
separation zones and early-warning fields. These spaces allow the army to
position troops, run reconnaissance and engineering units, and launch
strikes without direct contact with resistance fighters.

The strategy, he said, gives Israel greater ability to isolate eastern Gaza
City neighborhoods and sustain pressure on civilian and economic life
turning territory itself into a bargaining chip in future political
negotiations.

Abu Zubayda warned that the expansion is “not a small tactical move but an
attempt to redraw Gaza’s map,” with major consequences, including the
displacement of hundreds of families from areas where Israeli forces are
advancing, deepening an already severe humanitarian crisis.

Israel currently maintains around 40 active military sites behind the
yellow line, the informal boundary set during the first phase of the truce.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20251128/b70fa084/attachment-0001.htm>