Netanyahu ordered the Israeli army to take control of 70% of Gaza

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the army this Thursday to extend its control over the Gaza Strip to 70% of the territory, a figure that far exceeds the terms of the ceasefire in force since October 2025. The announcement, made in a West Bank settlement and broadcast by Israeli channel 12, formalizes what until now was a reality that the government avoided publicly acknowledging.

“We are suffocating Hamas. We control 60% of the territory”, said Netanyahu. “My directive is to advance to 70%”, he added. The order implies a new breach of the agreement: when the ceasefire came into effect on October 10, 2025, Israel committed to withdrawing behind the so-called “yellow line”, which roughly delimited 53% of the territory under Israeli control.

The announcement comes less than two weeks after Netanyahu acknowledged, on May 15, that Israeli forces controlled 60% of Gaza. Humanitarian groups received a military map from Israel last month with an "orange line" that set that control at around 64% of the territory, a figure that the prime minister himself has now surpassed with his new directive.

The ceasefire of October 2025, promoted by President Donald Trump, ended two years of war initiated by the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, the deadliest perpetrated against Israeli civilians since the founding of the State. The first phase of the truce allowed the release of the hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners; that process concluded in January 2026.

A Palestinian inspects the site where an Israeli attack occurred on a house whose occupants had been warned by the Israeli army to evacuate it before the attack took place late Wednesday, in the Al-Maghazi refugee camp, in the center of the Gaza Strip.

The second phase included the disarmament of Hamas, the withdrawal of Israel, and the deployment of an International Stabilization Force. None of those commitments moved forward. Hamas refuses to disarm, Israel continues its operations in Gaza, and none of the five countries that promised troops for the international force have made any significant contribution.

The person in charge of overseeing the agreement is the Bulgarian diplomat Nickolay Mladenov, director general of the Peace Council for Gaza, created by UN Security Council resolution 2803. Mladenov warned last week that the stalemate could become permanent: a Gaza divided in which Hamas controls more than two million people in less than half of the territory, while Israel occupies the rest. “The status quo cannot be an option”, he declared.

Israel and Hamas accuse each other of violating the truce. Israel alleges that Hamas is rearming and that its forces have been attacked; Hamas maintains that the bombings, which did not cease since October, constitute the real breach of the agreement. Several NGOs reported on May 22 that the humanitarian situation remains "catastrophic" for the more than two million Palestinians crammed into a territory that is shrinking without reconstruction. Mladenov already warned that, without progress in the second phase, the "yellow line" could solidify "into a fence or a wall, a permanent separation within Gaza." Netanyahu's statement suggests that this warning did not find an echo in Jerusalem.