The commission said Israel’s “campaign of territorial fragmentation” includes the rapid growth of settlements, mass land seizures through “state land” declarations, the demolition of thousands of homes, and the forced displacement of entire communities.
Earlier this month, the commission accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza and blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior officials for incitement.
Gaza partitioned by military corridors
File Photo: Israeli soldiers inside Gaza. AFP
The report found that Israeli forces have created five military corridors: Philadelphi, Netzarim, Morag, Magen-Oz and Jabalia, dividing Gaza into disconnected zones.
“Israeli forces have also intentionally altered the geography of Gaza through the creation of military corridors, the expansion of the existing border buffer zone and the establishment of 'security zones', resulting in the fragmentation of Gaza,” the report stated.
The Netzarim corridor, for example, completely severs northern Gaza from the south, stretching from the Israel border to the Mediterranean Sea.
UN data shows Israeli forces were present or had issued displacement orders in nearly 88 percent of Gaza as of July 2025.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared: “I will not compromise on full Israeli security control over all the territory west of Jordan, and this is contrary to a Palestinian State.”
Right-wing Israeli Knesset member Ze’ev Elkin remarked on the permanence of the land grab, saying: “When we capture territory, it does not mean we will leave it.”
The buffer zone expansion
Israel’s buffer zone inside Gaza has expanded dramatically since October 2023.
What began as a zone just 300 metres deep grew to one kilometre by December, and then up to three kilometres in June 2024, a vast area given that Gaza is only 6 to 12 kilometres wide.
After March 2025, the zone extended further to engulf the Philadelphi Corridor along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt.
By then, it covered 138 square kilometres, or 37 percent of Gaza.
By June 2025, it had reached 181 square kilometres—about half of the entire territory—swallowing major urban areas including Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia in the north and all of Rafah Governorate in the south.
The expansion has been accompanied by systematic destruction.
In the Netzarim corridor, 95 percent of structures were demolished, while the Philadelphi corridor saw 99 percent damage.
Between October 2023 and February 2024, the share of destroyed or damaged buildings inside the zone jumped from 15 to 90 percent, with 3,033 buildings razed and another 593 damaged.
The destruction also devastated farmland, wiping out 120 square kilometres, a third of Gaza’s most fertile agricultural land.
According to the commission, Israeli soldiers from the Nahal Brigade admitted in August 2025 that some of this destruction was intentional, carried out to prevent the forcibly displaced population from returning.
Illegal settlement expansion at record pace
File Photo: Tents are set up by Israeli settlers in the Palestinian village of Bruqin, outside the walls of an illegal settlement, in the occupied-West Bank. AFP
In May 2025, Israel launched land registration procedures in Area C of the occupied West Bank for the first time since 1967, following a wave of unprecedented land seizures the previous year.
According to the report, Israeli authorities approved 59 new settler outposts in 2024, compared with an annual average of seven to eight between 1996 and 2023, marking the largest expansion since the occupation began.
That same year, Israel declared 24,258 dunums (24.26 square kilometres) as “state land,” the biggest single-year appropriation since 1998.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich openly framed the measures as part of an annexation drive, saying they amounted to “taking responsibility for the territory as a permanent sovereign towards an aim of de jure annexation.”
The government also introduced a “bypass legalization mechanism” granting 70 illegal outposts access to state funding without formal approval, effectively institutionalizing their status.
Systemic displacement and settler violence
Displaced Palestinians move with their belongings southwards on a road in the Nuseirat refugee camp area in the central Gaza Strip following renewed Israeli evacuation orders for Gaza City. AFP
In January 2025, Israel launched Operation Iron Wall, the largest military campaign in the occupied West Bank since 2002, targeting the refugee camps of Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nur Shams.
The offensive displaced over 33,000 Palestinians, including 10,700 people from Jenin camp (44 percent of its population), 10,500 from Nur Shams (78 percent), and 12,200 from Tulkarm (44 percent).
The Israeli army deployed helicopter gunfire, airstrikes, tanks, and bulldozers, destroying over 1,000 homes and damaging thousands more.
Defence Minister Israel Katz said the displaced population “will not be allowed back in the coming year,” signalling permanent displacement.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich linked the operation directly to settlement protection, calling it “a strong and ongoing campaign … to protect the settlement and the settlers.”
The commission found that the military assault was part of a broader, systematic strategy of forced displacement, reinforced by a surge in settler violence.
In the first half of 2025 alone, it recorded 740 settler attacks causing casualties or property damage, often carried out by “settlers, dressed in army uniforms and likely enlisted or reserve soldiers, committed acts of violence against Palestinians,” the report read.
Since the outbreak of Israel's genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, more than 3,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from their homes in the West Bank by settler assaults and military operations.
According to the commission, these policies are designed to encircle Palestinian communities and drive them out, forming “configurations that completely eliminate the possibility of their return.”
Annexation and political intent
The commission found Israeli policies aim at “striving towards a Jewish majority in all areas under Israeli control, reducing the possibility of geographical self-determination for the Palestinian people.”
Israeli officials continuously proposed expelling Gaza's Palestinian population and re-establishing Jewish settlements abandoned in 2005.
Finance Minister Smotrich told a settlement conference: “Israel will capture Gaza and transform it into an indispensable part of the State of Israel.”
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir stated, “with the destruction of Hamas and the encouragement of Palestinian migration, Israel has a unique opportunity to capture Gaza.”
Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu declared that “Gaza belongs to the Jewish people.”
Defence Minister Katz proposed establishing a “humanitarian city” where initially 600,000 Palestinians would be confined. “Those who enter the city would not be allowed to leave,” he added, according to media reports.
Genocide and famine in Gaza
File Photo: Palestinian children Uday, left, and Mohammed Mahra, both suffering from malnutrition, rest at the Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip. AFP
The commission earlier concluded that “genocide is occurring in Gaza and is continuing to occur,” its chief Navi Pillay told AFP, adding that “the responsibility lies with the State of Israel.”
The body, mandated to investigate rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories, released its latest report nearly two years into Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
In August, the UN declared that famine had taken hold in the enclave, the first ever in the Middle East, after six months of Israel’s air, land, and sea blockade preventing humanitarian aid from entering.
Over 450 Palestinians have since died of starvation and acute malnutrition amid the Israeli-manufactured famine.
Since the genocide began in October 2023, Israel has killed at least 66,000 Palestinians, wounded more than 167,000—mostly women and children—and destroyed much of Gaza’s infrastructure.
The commission also found that Israel has pursued a coordinated strategy across Gaza and the West Bank, fragmenting Palestinian territory through military corridors, expanded buffer zones, and accelerated settlement construction while forcibly displacing hundreds of thousands of people.
International legal implications
The commission concluded that Israel’s systematic territorial fragmentation violates the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit the annexation of occupied land and the forcible displacement of populations.
It said the coordinated nature of policies across Gaza, the West Bank, and inside Israel amounts to a comprehensive strategy aimed at dismantling Palestinian territorial continuity and blocking prospects for self-determination.
The report named six Israeli ministers as bearing primary responsibility: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, current Defence Minister Katz, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, and Settlements Minister Orit Strock.
It urged UN member states to review their relations with Israel, including arms transfers, recognize Palestinian rights to self-determination, and ensure accountability for breaches of international law.
According to the commission, Israel’s military campaigns, settlement expansion, and demographic policies form a single strategy designed to fragment Palestinian territory and erase the possibility of statehood through systematic control and displacement.
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