visualize where the conflict is in the Palestinian enclave

A new stage in the war ravaging the Gaza Strip. Since Tuesday 7 May, Israeli army tanks are stationed in Rafah, in the south of the enclave, also targeted by intense bombings. After taking control of the Gaza side of the city’s border post, a crossing point towards Egypt, Israel thus seems to materialize the large-scale assault announced for several weeks, in this area where approximately 1.4 million people, according to the UN.

A little over a month after the “tactical withdrawal”, the 7th April, of its troops stationed in Khan Younes, the Israeli army wants to reposition itself around a few nerve points. But which ones exactly ? And with what consequences for the populations of the enclave, already displaced several times to increasingly restricted areas ? Through three maps, franceinfo takes stock of the war waged by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip, which is entering its eighth month.

1 Israeli soldiers deployed in the central and southern Gaza Strip

After launching an “extensive” ground operation in the Palestinian enclave on October 27, 2023, in retaliation for the terrorist attack perpetrated three weeks earlier by Hamas, the Israeli army gradually withdrew part of its troops, made up of vast majority of reservists. At the beginning of April, she announced that her missions had been “accomplished” in Khan Younes, before ordering his soldiers to leave the area. But the Israelis have not left Gaza yet.

The Nahal Infantry Brigade and the 162nd armored division were ordered to remain stationed in the Palestinian enclave. The latter unit took control of the Rafah crossing point, between the enclave and Egypt, on the 7th. may. According to the Israeli army’s Telegram account, the 401st Armored Brigade also took part in this assault and has since been carrying out incursions into eastern Rafah.

The rest of the ground troops are concentrated further north, along the road 749, also called the Netzarim Corridor. This demarcation line to the south of Gaza City was specially created by the Israeli army to cut the territory in two. It takes its name from a former Israeli colony dismantled in 2005 and intersects Gaza’s two main roads, creating a strategic crossroads.

From the Netzarim corridor, currently managed by the 99th Infantry Division, the Israeli army claims to be carrying out “targeted raids and ambushes” in the north and center of the Gaza Strip. On Telegram, she says she has launched operations in all directions in recent weeks: Al-Chati and Zeytoun (north), in Nuseirat (center), at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City… The military presence in these areas is also betrayed by another element : several Israeli soldiers were recently killed there, as the army announced on its dedicated page.

2 Massive destruction and a kilometer-wide “buffer zone”

After more than 200 days of armed conflict, a third of the Gaza Strip is in ruins. The north of the territory was the first affected, before the bombings increased, from November 2023, in the south, in Khan Younes in particular, killing many civilians who had then left Gaza City. At the end of March, Unosat, the United Nations satellite mapping service, estimated that 35% of the buildings in the enclave had been damaged or destroyed.

A good part of these destroyed buildings are located on the border with Israel, on a strip approximately one kilometer deep in Palestinian territory. In a statement published in February, Unosat highlighted that almost 90% of the buildings located in this “buffer zone” were partially or completely razed. According to the Israeli army,This band was created for defensive purposes. “It’s to stop a terrorist attack, nothing else. It gives time and space to hope to prevent this type of attack.”, Miri Eisin, a reserve colonel in the Israeli army, explained to franceinfo in April.

The creation of this no man’s land with a lot of bombs and bulldozers is however very criticized by the international community. It is even a “possible war crime”, as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, declared in February, considering that this operation “has the aim or effect of making it impossible for civilians to return to these areas”.

3A third wave of evacuations for more than a million people

In the eighth month of the conflict in Gaza, the vast majority of the approximately 2.3 Millions of residents of the Palestinian enclave have had to flee their homes, then their shelter, on several occasions. On October 13, 2023, at the very beginning of its “Iron Swords” operation, the Israeli army ordered northern residents to move south, beyond the Wadi Gaza, a river that marks the boundary of Gaza City. . Many took the al-Rashid coastal road to seek refuge in Khan Younes, then designated as “safer area” by the Israeli army.

The 1st and 2 December, a second evacuation order was given for the governorate of Khan Younes. Hundreds of thousands of people then fled to Rafah, the last town in the South before the border with Egypt. In total, 1.4 million people crowded there at the beginning of May, according to the UN. On Monday, the Israeli army finally ordered some of the residents and displaced people to leave the area, via SMS and thousands of leaflets dropped by plane.

In the space of a few days, more than 100 000 people fled Rafah, as stated on Friday Georgios Petropoulos, head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) for Gaza. In its evacuation order, the Israeli army invites the populations to join a “humanitarian services zone”located along the coast between the village of Al-Mawasi and the town of Deir al-Balah.

As the BBC noted using satellite images, the Israeli army has been erecting a tent village in this area since the end of April. “It is not enough to put up tents. Alongside this, you need a whole sanitation, water and health service”, alerted Philippe Bonnet, emergency director for Solidarités International, at the beginning of May. The concern of NGOs is all the more acute as the border posts of Rafah and Kerem Shalom no longer allow humanitarian aid to pass into the South. Even if the second reopened on Wednesday, delivery remains “extremely difficult”, deplored Thursday evening in an interview with AFP Andrea De Domenico, head of Ocha in the occupied Palestinian territories.

While negotiations continue with difficulty between Israel and Hamas, the end of the fighting in Gaza remains a distant prospect. “Even after we take care of Rafah, there will be terrorism”, said Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari, quoted by Haaretz. “Hamas will move north and regroup. We will come back and operate wherever that happens.”he assured.