Since the early months of the Israeli war on Gaza, Israeli forces have occupied a four-mile road, known as the Netzarim corridor, that bisects the Palestinian territory to keep hundreds of thousands of displaced Gazans from returning north, said The New York Times.

This area has discreetly grown into an 18-square-mile block of territory controlled by Israeli forces, according to the Israeli military and a New York Times analysis of satellite images and video footage.

The expansion has also raised speculation about Israel’s plans for Gaza’s future. Israeli leaders have vowed to maintain security control in Gaza even after the war without saying explicitly what that might entail.

According to the New York Times, Israeli military analysts say the increase in infrastructure along the Netzarim corridor might serve that purpose.

In recent months, the Israeli military has extended its power over territory on either side of the corridor, roughly 4.3 miles wide and 4.3 miles long, to make it easier for Israeli forces to hold onto the area, Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman, said in an interview with the New York Times.

Israel captured and occupied Gaza in the 1967 war, maintaining Jewish settlements and military bases there; however, it withdrew its troops and settlers in 2005.

Some Israeli ministers have said that the military control in Gaza should pave the way for renewed Jewish settlement. However, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has ruled that out for now.

“The Times analysis of satellite images over the past three months shows that the Israeli military has at least 19 large bases throughout the area and dozens of small ones. While some were built earlier in the war, the imagery also shows that the pace of construction appears to be accelerating: 12 of the bases were either built or expanded since early September,” NYT report read.

Israeli military spokesman Shoshani said the expanded ground occupation was simply for operational reasons. “Anything that has been built there can be taken down within a day,” he said.

The Times cited Avi Dichter, an Israeli government minister, who said Israel was “going to stay in Gaza for a long time.”

Amir Avivi, a retired brigadier general regularly briefed by Israel’s security establishment, told the Times many of the country’s military leaders now believed “withdrawing and separation are no longer options.”

“That’s why they’re building all of this,” said General Avivi, who leads a forum of hawkish former security officials. “At the end of the day, the facts speak for themselves,” he added.

The Times verified 11 of the videos, which are filmed by drones and provide a bird’s-eye view of Israel’s efforts to remake the geography south of Gaza City. They were first published widely by Younis Tirawi, a Palestinian journalist who downloaded them from the soldiers’ social media accounts.

The Gazan village of Al Mughraqa, nearly four miles south of Gaza City, was the most brutal hit during that period. More than 10,000 people lived in Al Mughraqa before the war, surrounded by fragrant lemon orchards and tilling fields of tomatoes and cucumbers.

Satellite images captured by Planet Labs in May 2023 before the current Israeli war and in September 2024 show how the village of Al Mughraqa was almost destroyed during a period of early construction on the Netzarim corridor.