Israel seeks buffer zone as fighting intensifies in southern Gaza

Israel has informed several Arab states that it wants to carve out a buffer zone on the Palestinian side of Gaza’s border to prevent future attacks as part of proposals for the enclave after war ends, sources say.

Israel relayed its plans to its neighbours Egypt and Jordan, according to three regional sources, along with the United Arab Emirates — which normalized ties with Israel in 2020.

They also said that Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which does not have ties with Israel, were told. The initiative does not indicate an imminent end to Israel’s offensive — which resumed on Friday after a seven-day truce — but it shows Israel is reaching out beyond established Arab mediators, such as Egypt or Qatar, as it seeks to shape a post-war Gaza.

Israel pounded targets in the southern Gaza Strip on Saturday, intensifying a renewed offensive that followed a weeklong truce with Hamas, giving rise to renewed concerns about civilian casualties.

At least 200 Palestinians have been killed since the fighting resumed Friday morning, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, even as the United States urged ally Israel to do everything possible to protect civilians.

“This is going to be very important going forward,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday after meetings with Arab foreign ministers in Dubai, wrapping up his third Middle East tour since the war started. “It’s something we’re going to be looking at very closely.”

Attacks in the south

Many of Israel’s attacks Saturday were focused on the Khan Younis area in southern Gaza, where the military said it had struck more than 50 Hamas targets with airstrikes, tank fire and its navy.

The military dropped leaflets the day before warning residents to leave, but as of late Friday, there had been no reports of large numbers of people leaving, according to the United Nations.

“There is no place to go,” said Emad Hajar, who fled with his wife and three children from the northern town of Beit Lahia a month ago to seek refuge in Khan Younis.

“They expelled us from the north, and now they are pushing us to leave the south.”

Some two million people — almost Gaza’s entire population — are crammed into the territory’s south, where Israel urged people to relocate at the war’s start and has since vowed to extend its ground assault.

Unable to go into north Gaza or neighbouring Egypt, their only escape is to move around within the 220-square-kilometre area. Israel has released a map outlining the most dangerous zones.

Future remains uncertain

No Arab states have shown any willingness to police or administer Gaza in the future and most have roundly condemned Israel’s offensive that has killed more than 15,000 people, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry, and levelled swathes of Gaza’s urban areas. Israel says Hamas killed 1,200 people in its Oct. 7 raid and took roughly 240 hostages.

“Israel wants this buffer zone between Gaza and Israel from the north to the south to prevent any Hamas or other militants from infiltrating or attacking Israel,” said a senior regional security official, one of the three regional sources who asked not to be identified by nationality.

The Egyptian, Saudi, Qatari and Turkish governments did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Jordanian officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

A U.A.E. official did not respond directly when asked if Abu Dhabi had been told about the buffer zone, but said: “The U.A.E. will support any future post-war arrangements agreed upon by all the concerned parties” to achieve stability and a Palestinian state.

3-tier process

Asked about plans for a buffer zone, Ophir Falk, foreign policy adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told Reuters: “The plan is more detailed than that. It’s based on a three-tier process.”

Outlining the Israeli government’s position, he said the three tiers involved destroying Hamas, demilitarizing Gaza and de-radicalizing the enclave.

“A buffer zone may be part of the demilitarization process,” he said. He declined to offer details when asked whether those plans had been raised with international partners, including Arab states.

Arab states have dismissed as impossible Israel’s goal of wiping out Hamas, saying it was more than simply a militant force that could be defeated.

The regional sources compared the Gaza buffer zone plan to the “security zone” Israel once had in south Lebanon. Israel evacuated that zone, which was about 15 kilometres deep, in 2000 after years of fighting and attacks by Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

They also said Israel’s plan for post-war Gaza included deporting leaders of Hamas, an action that would also mirror the Israeli campaign in Lebanon in the 1980s when it drove out the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which had launched attacks from Lebanon into Israel.

“Israel is ready to pay a costly price to expel and evict Hamas completely from Gaza to other countries in the region similar to what it did in Lebanon, but it’s not the same. Getting rid of Hamas is difficult and not certain,” said another of the regional officials familiar with the discussions.

Israel has suggested in the past it was considering a buffer zone inside Gaza, but the sources said it was now presenting the proposals to Arab states as part of its future security plans for Gaza. Israeli troops withdrew from the enclave in 2005.

Washington opposes any plan reducing Palestinian territory

A U.S. official, who declined to be identified, said Israel had “floated” the buffer zone idea without saying to whom. But the official also repeated Washington’s opposition to any plan that reduced the size of Palestinian territory.

Jordan, Egypt and other Arab states have voiced fears that Israel wants to squeeze Palestinians out of Gaza, repeating the dispossession of land Palestinians experienced when Israel was created in 1948. The Israeli government denies any such aim.

A senior Israeli security source said the buffer zone idea was “being examined,” adding: “It is not clear at the moment how deep this will be and whether it could be one kilometre or two kilometres, or hundreds of metres [inside Gaza].”

Any encroachment into Gaza, which is about 40 kilometres long and between about five kilometres and 12 kilometres wide, would cram its 2.3 million people into an even smaller area.

In Washington, an Israeli official said the Israeli defence establishment was talking about “some kind of security buffer on the Gaza side of the border so that Hamas cannot gather military capabilities close to the border and surprise Israel again.”

“It is a security measure, not a political one,” the official said on condition of anonymity. “We do not intend to remain on the Gaza side of the border.”