Location at a glance: UN: Almost 70 percent of the Gaza Strip under the command of Israel

A year and a half after the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, around two thirds of the sealed coastal area are in order for evacuation command under Israel or are viewed as a blocking zone by the army. This applies to almost 70 percent of the Gaza Strip, wrote UN Secretary-General António Guterres on the platform X. “I am very concerned because the (humanitarian) help continues to be blocked with devastating consequences.”

The Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz announced at the beginning of the month that the army would conquer large areas in the Gaza Strip. They should serve as Israeli -controlled “security zones”. In the meantime, Israel’s troops had taken about a third of the sealed -on Gaza Strip and drove out the residents there, the “Wall Street Journal” reported. This strategy differs from that at the beginning of the war when Israel moved troops from place to place and explained that no area was occupied.

According to UN, almost 400,000 Palestinians were sold within the coastal strip between March 18 and April 8. Overall, more than two million people live in the densely populated area on the Mediterranean. The UN Human Rights Office recently complained that the increasingly frequent evacuation commands would have caused the Palestinians to be violently pushed into ever smaller areas in which they had little or no access to water, food and accommodation.

Israel threatens to keep the conquered areas under their own control indefinitely to force Islamist Hamas to gain in. It is supposed to release the remaining 24 hostages, which are accepted from which they are still alive and 35 corpses of other kidnapped Israelis. They were all abducted to Gaza on October 7, 2023 at the terrorist attack of Hamas and other Palestinian groups to the south of Israel.

Hamas will have to take more and more blows, said Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to his office during a visit to Israeli soldiers in the north. He was therefore accompanied by Katz and chief of staff Ejal Zamir. The longer the Hamas refrains from releasing the hostages, the more violent the strokes, Katz threatened.

The Hamas is currently surpassing a proposal of the Egyptian brokers for the release of up to eleven of the 24 hostages and the corpses of several kidnappers in return for a new ceasefire of up to 70 days, the “Wall Street Journal” quoted Egyptian officials. The proposal also includes the demand that Hamas releases its weapons, which rejected the organization.

Netanyahu urges an agreement that provides for the release of the hostages, but allows Israel to continue the war until the Hamas is completely defeated or puts down its weapons on its own. However, the Palestinian organization is only ready to release the kidnapped if Israel agrees to the end of the war.

In Israel, voices are currently increasing from the ranks of the army, the criticism of the proceedings of the armed forces in the Gaza Strip, question the priorities of the Netanyahus government and even demand an end to the war. The Israeli newspaper “Haaretz” reported 472 ex-soldiers from special units, including active reservists, had signed a letter to give priority to the release of the hostage. It says: “The release of the hostages is the most important moral bid today and has priority over all other goals.”

According to the “Times of Israel”, around 1700 artists and cultural workers also spoke out for an immediate stop of the fights and the release of the hostages. In a letter from the group it was said that the Gaza war served political interests, put hosts and soldiers in danger and lead to suffering and thousands of victims on both sides. 350 Israeli authors also demanded an end to the war.

According to the newspaper, around 600 architects, engineers and urban planners in a further letter to the demand for the release of the hostages, even if this should mean the end of the war. According to media reports, more and more reservists are currently refusing to return to the fights because they do not agree with the procedure of the army and, for example, fear an Israeli re -occupation of the Gaza Strip.

Netanyahus right -wing extremist coalition partners have long been calling for a Jewish resettlement of the coastal strip, from which Israel withdrew 20 years ago. US President Donald Trump as Netanyahu’s most important ally recently said that Israel should not have given up the “incredibly important piece of real estate”-as he described the war zone.