Maps show how Israel’s ‘Yellow Line’ keeps squeezing Palestinians in Gaza

A year into a ‘ceasefire’, Israel restricts access to 65 percent of Gaza and crams 2.1 million people into the rest. Save Share Israel has expanded its military occupation in the Gaza Strip in violation of a United States-brokered‘ceasefire’, forcing Palestinians into an ever-smaller share of the besieged territory, devastated by Israel’s ongoing genocidal war. Nearly two-thirds of Gaza is now under Israeli military control or subject to access restrictions. The original ‘Yellow Line’, established under US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan to end the war, marked the area to which Israeli forces initially withdrew. They were expected to make further withdrawals gradually, but instead, they have seized more territory. On Sunday, Israeli forces moved yellow concrete blocks dozens of metres west in Shujayea, a neighbourhood in southeastern Gaza City, forcing Palestinian families to flee and bringing more of the neighbourhood under Israeli military control. “It’s not simply about where the ‘Yellow Line’ is today but where it can move next,” Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim al-Khalili said, reporting from Gaza City. “For families who have been repeatedly displaced in the past three years, the situation remains dire, and they have to make the impossible decision of where they can go.” More than 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.1 million population has been forcibly displaced by Israel’s war, launched on October 7, 2023, after Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel. Using maps, Al Jazeera shows how much of Gaza Israel has grabbed since the ‘ceasefire’. Before the war, Palestinians were spread across the Gaza Strip, a 365sq km (141sq-mile) territory roughly 41km (25 miles) long and from 6km to 12km (4 to 7 miles) wide. That made it one of the most densely populated places on Earth with about 6,000 people per square kilometre, similar to Nairobi or London. Each person had, on average, about 160sq metres (1,722sq ft) of land. Even then, not all of Gaza’s land was accessible. Israel enforced a buffer zone along the fence with Israel, and Palestinians who approached it risked being shot. In 2010, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimated that the restricted area covered 17 percent of Gaza’s land and 35 percent of its farmland. Gaza has been under an Israeli land, air and sea blockade since 2007....