File Photo: Israeli soldiers operating in the Gaza Strip amid its genocidal war on the strip. AFP
The military also said it would soon expand operations "vigorously" across most of Gaza amid its 17-month-old genocidal war on the strip.
“Activity will expand rapidly to additional locations throughout most of Gaza, and you will have to evacuate the fighting zones,” Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement, without saying where Palestinians were meant to go, according to AP.
Last Sunday, an Israeli security forum revealed Tel Aviv's plans to cantonize Gaza into "humanitarian islands" under Israeli control in Gaza, effectively fragmenting the strip and keeping it under Israeli occupation.
The so-called "humanitarian islands" plan first surfaced in December 2024.
Israeli troops were deployed last week to the new "security corridor" Morag, the name of a Jewish settlement that once stood between Rafah and Khan Younis, after the army ordered sweeping evacuations covering most of Rafah — an indication it could soon launch another major ground operation.
The Rafah municipality, in a statement, called Israel's actions a “flagrant breach of international legitimacy,” according to AP.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government has also imposed a month-long blockade on food, fuel and humanitarian aid that has left the territory’s roughly two million Palestinians facing acute shortages as supplies dwindle — a tactic rights groups say is a war crime.
Netanyahu has said Morag would be “a second Philadelphi corridor,” referring to the Gaza side of the border with Egypt farther south, which has been under Israeli control since May 2024.
The corridors, coupled with a buffer zone that Israel has razed and expanded, give it more than 50 percent control of the territory.
The Israeli occupation army has killed at least 1,563 Palestinians since Israel unilaterally ended the ceasefire deal and renewed its genocidal war on Gaza on 18 March.
Two days after resuming the war, Israel reasserted control of the Netzarim corridor that divides northern Gaza from the south and from where it had previously withdrawn as part of a ceasefire that began in January.
Many Palestinians have been crowding into squalid tent camps or the rubble of their previous homes, often displaced multiple times in response to Israel's bombings and evacuation orders since the war started on 7 October 2023.
Israel, on Saturday, ordered the evacuation of areas east of Khan Younis ahead of an attack.
In the evening, Israel ordered the evacuation of several neighbourhoods in Nuseirat, central Gaza, after it claimed it had intercepted a projectile from the territory, according to AP.
Short link: