Horror, evil devastation, and yet these words are understatements when placed against the dark reality that is Gaza. Right now, Israel controls East Gaza, but wants to expand further beyond the “yellow line” zone in which Israel is allowed to have a military presence in accordance to the ceasefire agreement. The Israeli publication, +972, recently published an article on the state of Gaza and what Israel has in store for the region. Israel has been working with the Abu Shabab faction, which is aligned with ISIS, a fact that flies into the face of the typical hasbara narrative that this is a “civilizational” war against terrorism. Moreover, the +972 report says that Israel plans on rebuilding Rafah, driving the Gazan population into the rebuilt Rafah, making the surrounding areas into a “kill zone” which if one enters it would be permissible for Israeli soldiers to kill, effectively making Rafah into a concentration camp fortified by AI technology. What we are facing in Gaza is the rising of AI tech fascism:
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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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.”