What’s behind Israel’s new plan to divide Gaza in two

While Trump hails "peace," Israel is entrenching a new regime of fortified borders, proxy rule, and engineered despair — with expulsion still the end goal.

By Muhammad Shehada October 31, 2025

https://www.972mag.com/trump-israel-plan-divide-gaza/

Since the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into effect, the Trump administration has been hailing the beginning of a new chapter in Gaza. “After so many years of unceasing war and endless danger, today the skies are calm, the guns are silent, the sirens are still, and the sun rises on a Holy Land that is finally at peace,” the president declared during his speech at the Knesset earlier this month. But facts on the ground reveal a dramatically grimmer reality and shed light on Israel’s new plan for the enclave’s permanent subjugation. 

With the so-called “Yellow Line,” Israel has divided the Strip in two: West Gaza, encompassing 42 percent of the enclave, where Hamas remains in control and over 2 million people are crammed in; and East Gaza, encompassing 58 percent of the territory, which has been fully depopulated of civilians and is controlled by the Israeli army and four proxy gangs. 

Under the Trump plan, this line was intended as a temporary marker — the first stage in Israel’s gradual withdrawal from the Strip as an International Stabilization Force assumed control on the ground. Instead, Israeli forces are digging in, reinforcing the division with earthworks, fortifications, and barriers that suggest a move toward permanence.

West Gaza is coming to resemble southern Lebanon, which the Israeli army has continued to bomb periodically after signing a ceasefire with Hezbollah last November. Since the start of the truce in Gaza, Israeli airstrikes, drone strikes, and machine gun fire have continued to pummel the population on a daily basis, usually under the unsubstantiated pretext of “foiling an imminent attack,” retaliating for alleged assaults on Israeli soldiers, or targeting individuals who approach the Yellow Line. So far, these assaults have killed over 200 Palestinians, including dozens of children. 

Israel is still restricting aid to West Gaza, with an average of around 95 trucks entering per day during the first 20 days of the ceasefire — well below the 600 per day stipulated in the agreement between Israel and Hamas. Most residents have lost their homes, but Israel is still preventing the entry of tents, caravans, prefabricated housing units, and other essentials, with winter approaching.

East Gaza, once the enclave’s breadbasket, is now a desolate wasteland. Colleagues and friends who live nearby describe the constant sound of explosions and demolitions: Israeli soldiers and private settler contractors are still systematically flattening all remaining buildings, except the small camps designated for the gangs living under Israeli army protection and lavished with guns, cash, vehicles, and other luxuries.

Israel has no intention of leaving East Gaza anytime soon. The army has been cementing the Yellow Line with concrete blocks — swallowing large swaths of West Gaza in the process — and Defense Minister Israel Katz has openly boasted about authorizing fire on anyone who comes near the barrier, even if only to try to reach their home. Reports also suggest Israel is planning to expand the Yellow Line further into West Gaza, but the Trump administration appears to be delaying this move for now. 

And in a press conference last week, Trump’s envoy Jared Kushner announced that reconstruction would only happen in areas that are currently fully controlled by the Israeli army, while the rest of Gaza will remain rubble and ash until Hamas fully disarms and ends its rule.

These hardening divisions between East and West Gaza portend what Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer has called “the two-state solution … within Gaza itself.” Israel would allow symbolic reconstruction in areas of Rafah ruled by its proxy gangs, while the rest of East Gaza would likely become a flattened buffer zone and dumping ground for Israel. In this scenario, West Gaza would remain in a perpetual state of war, wreckage, and deprivation.

This is not post-war rebuilding but rather engineered despair, imposed through walls, the constant threat of military violence, and networks of collaborators. Gaza is being remade not for the benefit of its people, but to entrench permanent Israeli control and advance its longstanding objective: forcing Palestinians out of the Strip.

Hamas reasserts control

For its part, Hamas has been trying to reassert control in West Gaza to reverse the societal collapse Israel has engineered throughout two years of genocide. As soon as the ceasefire went into effect, Hamas launched a security crackdown to pursue criminals and disarm Israeli-backed clans and militias.

The campaign peaked with the public execution of eight alleged collaborators, along with heavy clashes with the Daghmoush clan — a calculated show of force intended to intimidate rival groups. The strategy appeared effective: several families soon handed over their weapons to Hamas without a fight.

With this campaign, Hamas also aims to convey, both domestically and internationally, that it hasn’t been defeated despite its substantial losses during the war, and that it cannot be sidelined in debates over Gaza’s future. At the same time, the group is trying to restore a semblance of civic order and exact revenge on gang members and criminals who exploited the chaos of war to loot and prey on civilians. This is also part of an effort to recover legitimacy after losing much of its popular support as a result of Gaza’s vast destruction.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been desperate to persuade Trump to allow Israel to resume the genocide, capitalizing on isolated incidents in Rafah to justify renewed military action. In one case, two Israeli soldiers were killed reportedly after running over unexploded ordinance; in another, soldiers were attacked by what appeared to be a small Hamas cell with no awareness of the ceasefire or connection to the group’s chain of command. 

Netanyahu has also been weaponizing Hamas’ security crackdown, portraying it as a killing spree against civilians, and has accused the group of refusing to return hostage bodies or disarm — all in an effort to persuade Washington to greenlight a renewed offensive in Gaza under the pretext of pressuring Hamas. 

The U.S. president, still euphoric from the rare wave of positive media coverage surrounding the Gaza ceasefire, has so far been reining Israel in, although it remains unclear how long this will last. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is next in line to babysit Netanyahu, following visits from Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, and Secretary of state Marco Rubio. 

For now, the president is determined to preserve the ceasefire, even if only nominally, to avoid the perception of failure or of having been played for a fool by Netanyahu. But the Israeli prime minister is betting that, with time, Trump will be distracted by the next big thing, lose interest in Gaza, and once again give him a free hand.

‘New Rafah’

But if it is unable to return to a full-scale assault, Israel’s backup plan has been to persuade the White House to limit reconstruction to Israel-controlled East Gaza, beginning in Rafah — conveniently along the border with Egypt, where upwards of 150,000 Gazans have already fled (reconstruction in the north, in areas such as Beit Lahiya, is notably absent from these plans). According to reports in the Israeli media, the rebuilt town — which would include “schools, clinics, public buildings, and civilian infrastructure” — would be surrounded by a vast buffer area, effectively comprising a “kill zone.”

Eventually, Israel may allow or even encourage Palestinians to move into the reconstructed areas in Rafah, as a “safe zone” in Gaza where civilians can flee Hamas — an idea that pro-Israeli voices in the American media have been trying to sell. Since Hamas cannot be fully eliminated from Gaza, as Israeli political columnist and Netanyahu ally Amit Segal recently admitted, the only “future” for Palestinians in the enclave will be in the demilitarized East under Israeli control. 

“A new Rafah … this would be the moderate Gaza,” Segal told The New York Times’ Ezra Klein. “And the other Gaza would be what lies in the ruins in Gaza City and the refugee camps in central Gaza.”

Currently, the only Palestinian inhabitants in Rafah are members of Yasser Abu Shabab’s militia — an ISIS-linked group armed, financed, and sheltered by Israel. It seems highly unlikely that many Palestinians would accept living under the rule of a warlord, convicted drug dealer, and collaborator who has been systematically looting food supplies and enforcing starvation in Gaza at Israel’s behest. Moreover, anyone crossing into Israeli-controlled East Gaza risks being seen as a collaborator, as happened to prominent anti-Hamas activist Moumen Al-Natour, who fled Hamas’ recent crackdown for Abu Shabab’s territory and was subsequently disowned by his family.

Even if some desperate Gazans do agree to move to Rafah, Israel will not simply let them cross en masse from West to East Gaza, invoking the pretext of preventing Hamas infiltration among the crowds. The “security bubbles” plan — first pitched by then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in June 2024 — which envisioned the creation of 24 closed-off camps to which Gaza’s population would be gradually moved, provides a blueprint: The Israeli army would likely inspect and clear each individual permitted to cross into East Gaza, inevitably producing a long and intrusive AI-powered bureaucratic process that would leave applicants vulnerable to blackmail by Israeli security agencies, which could demand collaboration in exchange for entry. 

Israel has made it abundantly clear that anyone who would cross into that “sterile area” in Rafah would not be allowed to cross back to the other side of Gaza — turning Rafah into a “concentration camp,” as Israel’s former prime minister, Ehud Olmert, put it. Many Palestinians would thus avoid entering East Gaza out of fear that if Israel resumes the genocide at its former intensity, they could be pushed into Egypt. Indeed, even while laying out plans to allow reconstruction in Rafah, the Israeli army is still demolishing and blowing up the remaining homes and buildings in that very area.

Ultimately, Israel’s “New Rafah” would serve as a Potemkin village — an external façade to make the world believe the situation is better than it actually is, offering only basic shelter and marginally more security to Palestinians who flee there. And without full reconstruction or any political horizon, this plan seems to resemble what Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich promised in May: “The Gazan citizens will be concentrated in the south. They will be totally despairing, understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places.”

Disarmament as trap

Regardless of whether reconstruction proceeds in East Gaza, Israel will increasingly point to it as a “terror free” and “de-radicalized” zone and continue to bomb the other side under the pretext of disarming and deposing Hamas.

The Islamist group has already agreed to hand Gaza over to an administrative technocratic committee and allow a new Palestinian security force trained by Egypt and Jordan to be deployed in the enclave along with an international protection mission. Netanyahu, however, has outright rejected the entry of 5,500 Palestinian policemen into Gaza, refused to allow Turkish or Qatari stabilization forces into the Strip, and obstructed the creation of the administrative committee.

Similarly, disarmament is an area of ambiguity that gives Israel a near-endless pretext for preventing reconstruction in West Gaza and maintaining military control. Hamas has signaled that it would agree to decommission its offensive weapons (such as rockets), and already accepted giving up the rest of its light defensive weaponry (including firearms and anti-tank missiles) as the outcome of a peace agreement, rather than its prerequisite. 

Hamas is also open to a process similar to Northern Ireland whereby it would lock its defensive weapons up in warehouses and commit to a full mutual cessation of hostilities for a decade or two, or until the end of Israel’s illegal occupation. In that case, the remaining light weaponry would function as a form of insurance that Israel would not renege on its promises of withdrawing from Gaza and ending the genocide.

Both the British and Egyptian governments, along with Saudi Arabia and other regional powers, are currently pushing for that Northern Ireland decommissioning model — a sign that they recognize the sensitivity and complexity of the disarmament issue. 

Israel’s insistence on immediate full disarmament is a deliberately unworkable trap that demands Palestinians’ complete surrender. Even if Hamas’ leadership in Doha is somehow coerced into accepting this capitulation, many of their own members and other militant groups in Gaza are bound to disobey. This would be similar to Colombia’s disarmament agreement where many FARC militants defected and created new militias or joined gangs. 

And as long as the Israeli army remains inside Gaza, with no genuine prospect of ending Israel’s siege and apartheid rule, there will always be an incentive for some actors to take up arms. Israel can then point to those splinter groups or individual militants as justification to continue bombing and occupying Gaza.

Israel spent over 740 days, close to $100 billion, and lost about 470 soldiers to reduce Gaza to dust. As Netanyahu bragged in May, Israel has been “destroying more and more houses [in Gaza, and Palestinians accordingly] have nowhere to return,” adding, “The only obvious result will be Gazans choosing to emigrate outside of the Strip.” 

Even after failing to achieve mass expulsion through direct military assault, Israel’s leadership is now pursuing the same outcome through attrition and engineered despair, using rubble, siege, and periodic bombing as instruments of demographic redesign. The prospect of ethnic cleansing has not disappeared with the ceasefire; it has merely evolved into a new policy, disguised and normalized through bureaucratic planning.