PRIME Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Israel is establishing a new security corridor across the Gaza Strip to pressure Hamas, suggesting it would cut off the southern city of Rafah, which Israel has ordered evacuated, from the rest of the Palestinian territory.
AP reported, the announcement came after Netanyahu’s defense minister said Israel would seize large areas of Gaza and add them to its so-called security zones. A wave of Israeli strikes, meanwhile, killed more than 40 Palestinians, nearly half of them women and children, according to Palestinian health officials.
Israel has vowed to escalate the nearly 18-month war with Hamas until the militant group returns dozens of remaining hostages, disarms and leaves the territory. Israel ended a ceasefire in March and has imposed a monthlong halt on all imports of food, fuel and humanitarian aid.
Netanyahu described the new axis as the Morag corridor, using the name of a Jewish settlement that once stood between Rafah and Khan Younis, suggesting it would run between the two southern cities. He said it would be “a second Philadelphi corridor " referring to the Gaza side of the border with Egypt further south, which has been under Israeli control since last May.
Israel has reasserted control over the Netzarim corridor, also named for a former settlement, that cuts off the northern third of Gaza, including Gaza City, from the rest of the narrow coastal strip. Both of the existing corridors run from the Israeli border to the Mediterranean Sea.
“We are cutting up the strip, and we are increasing the pressure step by step, so that they will give us our hostages,” Netanyahu said.
The Western-backed Palestinian Authority, led by rivals of Hamas, expressed its “complete rejection” of the planned corridor. Its statement also called for Hamas to give up power in Gaza, where the militant group has faced rare protests recently.
In northern Gaza, an Israeli airstrike hit a U.N. building in the built-up Jabaliya refugee camp, killing 15 people, including nine children and two women, according to the Indonesian Hospital. The Israeli military said it struck Hamas militants in a command-and-control center.
AP correspondent Charles de Ledesma reports Israel’s defense minister says the country’s military operation in the Gaza Strip is expanding to seize “large areas.”
The building, previously a clinic, had been converted into a shelter for displaced people, with more than 700 residing there, according to Juliette Touma, a spokesperson for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, the main aid provider in Gaza. No U.N. staff were wounded in the strike.
She said U.N. staff warned people about the dangers of remaining there after Wednesday’s strike but that many chose to stay, “simply because they have absolutely nowhere else to go.”
U.N. says most of Gaza is a ‘no-go’ zone
More than 60% of Gaza is now considered a “no-go” zone because of Israeli evacuation orders, according to Olga Cherevko, a spokesperson for the U.N. humanitarian aid office. Hundreds of thousands of people are living in squalid tent camps along the coast or in the ruins of their destroyed homes.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz earlier said Israel would seize “large areas” and add them to its security zones, apparently referring to an existing buffer zone along Gaza’s entire perimeter. He called on Gaza residents to “expel Hamas and return all the hostages,” saying “this is the only way to end the war.”
On Sunday, Netanyahu said Israel plans to maintain overall security control of Gaza after the war and implement President Donald Trump’s proposal to resettle much of its population elsewhere through what the Israeli leader referred to as “voluntary emigration.”
Palestinians have rejected the plan, viewing it as expulsion from their homeland after Israel’s offensive left much of it uninhabitable, and human rights experts say implementing the plan would likely violate international law. – April 3, 2025
