Likely buffer zone coming up along border, analysis shows
Satellite photos show new demolition along a onekilometre-deep path on the Gaza Strip’s border with Israel, according to an analysis by The Associated Press and expert reports. The destruction comes as Israel has said it wants to establish a buffer zone there, over international objections, further tearing away at land the Palestinians want for a state.
The demolition along the path represents only a sliver of the wider damage from the Israel-Hamas war seen in Gaza, which one assessment suggests has damaged or destroyed half of all the buildings within the coastal enclave.
Israeli leaders have signalled that they would like to establish a buffer zone as a defensive measure, which they contend could prevent a repeat of the Oct. 7 cross-border attack by Hamas that triggered the nearly four-month-old war. That’s despite U.S. warnings not to shrink Gaza’s territory.
Israel’s military declined to answer whether it is carving out a buffer zone when asked by the AP, only saying it “takes various imperative actions that are needed in order to implement a defence plan that will provide improved security in southern Israel.” However, the military has acknowledged it has demolished buildings throughout the area.
An Israeli government official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing internal deliberations, said a “temporary security buffer zone” is under construction. The scope of the demolitions, however, calls into question how temporary the possible buffer zone will be.
Gaza has a nearly 60-kilometre border with Israel, with its back up against the Mediterranean Sea. Creating that buffer zone would take some 60 square kilometres out of the Gaza Strip, which has a total land mass of about 360 square kilometres.
Toward the southern part of the Gaza Strip, much of the land in the imagined buffer zone is farmland that abuts the vast $1-billion (U.S.) border barrier constructed on Israeli land that separates it from the enclave. But near the town of Khirbet Khuzaa, where the border turns to the northwest, it’s a different story.
Satellite images from Planet Labs PBC analyzed by the AP show significant destruction of buildings and lands bulldozed in a roughly six-square-kilometre area. Just over four kilometres north, farmland has been torn up into bare dirt along where the potential buffer zone would sit.
Meanwhile, U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday issued an executive order that targets Israeli settlers in the West Bank who have been accused of attacking Palestinians and Israeli peace activists in the occupied territory, imposing financial sanctions and visa bans in an initial round against four individuals.
Those settlers were involved in acts of violence, as well as threats and attempts to destroy or seize Palestinian property, according to the order. The penalties aim to block the four from using the U.S. financial system and bar American citizens from dealing with them. U.S. officials said they were evaluating whether to punish others involved in attacks that have intensified during the war.
Elsewhere in northern Turkey, two gunmen took seven hostages at a factory owned by U.S. company Procter & Gamble on Thursday, according to media reports, apparently in protest of the war.
Turkish media published an image of one of the purported suspects inside the factory, a man wearing what appeared to be a rudimentary explosives belt and holding a handgun. Hours later, a P&G spokesperson said the situation at its plant in Gebze in the province of Kocaeli had been resolved and all personnel were safe and the assailant apprehended by law enforcement. The statement from the spokesperson referred to one assailant.