Against the backdrop of the collapsed truce and re-escalation of the war on Gaza, Tel Aviv tightened its stranglehold on the border crossings and ratcheted up its use of starvation as a weapon of war and collective punishment.
And the Israeli project is parading beneath the charming rubric of “humanitarian islands”, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) will reinvade the Strip and secure the key axes to partition it and cordon off the fragments. As a first step, the IOF has reinforced its presence in the Philadelphi Corridor, breaching the ceasefire agreement with the same facility with which Israel violates all its agreements. Under the ceasefire agreement, Israel was to at least begin the withdrawal of its forces from that area. In a similar spirit, the IOF has re-entered the Netzarim Axis, from which it had previously withdrawn, and seized control of the Jabaliya axis in northern Gaza. The Israeli occupying power has thus tightened its hold on Gaza on the pretext that Hamas has refused to lay down its weapons.
Meanwhile, Israel has designated western and central Gaza City as the refuge for the forcibly displaced from northern Gaza and it has designated Khan Younis as the refuge for the forcibly displaced from Rafah, which has been completely destroyed. The IOF now occupies around 30 per cent of the enclave. These areas are to serve as “buffer zones” in the framework of the broader Five Fingers Plan, which will divide the enclave into quadrants separated by five fortified axes to sever the quadrants from outside and from each other. For instance, the Jabaliya Axis separates Beit Lahia, Beit Hanoun, and Jabaliya Camp from Gaza City, while the Netzarim Axis divides Gaza City and northern Gaza from the central and southern regions.
The plan is being presented as a means to pressure Hamas, which has recently come under unprecedented criticism domestically, with some Gazans openly calling on it to leave power. In fact, the strategy, devised by IOF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir, aims to destroy Hamas’ command and control structure and ensure that, if there are talks, Hamas can only come to the table as a defeated party. The Zamir plan requires permanent ground forces in Gaza, as opposed to relying only on rapid deployments of elite units and electronic warfare technology.
If the Five Fingers Plan enjoys political support in Israel, it has also encountered some domestic criticism, mostly for the exorbitant costs it entails. Some have countered that the US, which is unstinting in its support for any Israeli plan, will help foot the bill, especially since the Trump plan for the “voluntary” expulsion of Palestinians out of Gaza remains out of reach. Not that this has deterred Israel from pursuing the forcible transfer of Palestinians through other means. This is why it created a special agency under the IOF for the purpose, echoing a scheme from before Ariel Sharon ordered the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. At the time, Israel did not occupy the entire enclave. Rather, it only occupied those parts it deemed essential to security and avoided deploying forces in densely populated urban areas.
The recently revealed and euphemistically termed “humanitarian islands” plan is a transitional stage in the Five Fingers Plan. Palestinians will be herded into the refugee “cities” supervised by Israeli forces and administered by local appointees from within these cities. The purpose is at once to sideline Hamas in Gaza and obviate the return of the Palestinian Authority to the enclave in any form.
Israel will continue to tightly regulate the distribution of aid and relief to the “humanitarian islands,” dismantling UNRWA operations while its forces remain on hand to strike arbitrarily at will. However, the plan will depend on international funding and securing that could prove a significant challenge. Israel’s international reputation is at an all-time nadir, and no country that even nominally respects international law and humanitarian law could openly support such a project. The main exception, again, is the US, which is forever on hand to lighten the occupying power’s financial burdens. According to Israeli sources, this phase could last two years, during which it will explore other “unconventional” solutions.
After a year and half of Israel’s ceaseless evacuation orders, forcing defenceless civilians to flee to specially designated safe zones only for its forces to murder them en route, bomb the safe zones and prevent international relief convoys from entering the Strip, any rational person would be hard put to believe that Israel has benevolent humanitarian intentions towards Palestinian civilians. In fact, it is patently obvious that the plan aims to keep the Palestinians in conditions unfit for human habitation while simultaneously attempting to deflect focus from the political conflict by playing up an engineered humanitarian crisis it will blame on Hamas.
This plan has grave implications for the future of the Palestinian cause. It is an acknowledgement that the Trump plan is unfeasible under the current regional and international conditions. Therefore, Tel Aviv came up with the alternative: the return to a full direct military occupation regime that will assume operation of concentration camps in which squalor, poverty, malnutrition and disease will be left to generate the voluntary displacement pressures. Then the IOF migration office can get to work.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 10 April, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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