Shelling at night, gunfire by day in Israel's expanding zone of control in Gaza

Palestinian children leap into the air while playing on a trampoline in northern Gaza’s militarized orange zone of Beit Lahia, on May 31.

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GAZA CITY, Gaza, and DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — On a small rickety table, under a tent made of worn-out tarps, four friends meet for a game of cards.

One of the older men gripes to the others: “Life is so boring.” Like most in Gaza, the group of men are unemployed with no hope on the horizon as President Trump’s peace plan, which calls for Israeli withdrawal, new governance in Gaza and Hamas’ disarmament, stalls nine months after the ceasefire was brokered.

Members of the al-Hattab family take turns filling water jugs at their ruined house where they shelter in al-Shujaiya, Gaza Strip. The al-Hattabs are among the few Palestinians still living inside Israel’s expanding zone of control.

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Still, the men meet almost every afternoon, about 400 yards from their homes in the neighborhood of al-Shujaiya in eastern Gaza City. But each day, as the sun begins to set, the men have nowhere else to seek shelter and no choice but to return to their bombed-out homes where they hunker down for the night.

Despite a ceasefire in Gaza, civilians don’t feel safe

Subhi Shurabasi, a 60-year-old grandfather, shelters with his sons, their wives and his grandchildren inside the ruins of their destroyed home in al-Shujaiya, on May 31.

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“After sunset we put our hand on our heart and just pray,” Abu Ahmed Humeid says. “No one dares go outside.”

That’s because Israeli forces have been pushing deeper into Gaza in recent months. At the start of the ceasefire in October, the military controlled around half of the territory, along what is called the “yellow line.”

Israel’s military now controls nearly 70% of Gaza, including the area of al-Shujaiya. That’s according to comments by Israeli leaders as well as maps indicating areas of restricted access for aid groups that have been analyzed by NPR.

Israeli tanks maneuver around new military posts marked by towering Israeli flags within eyesight of Palestinians in al-Shujaiya.

An expanding militarized “orange zone”

A yellow concrete block sits on a dirt berm marking an encroaching military boundary across Salah al-Din Street, Gaza’s main road, as Israeli forces continue to advance their positions deeper into the territory.

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In mid-March, as the world’s attention was focused on the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, Israeli troops took control of 10% more of Gaza by designating what they call a new “orange zone” that runs north to south. Israel’s military indicated this zone of control in maps distributed to aid groups, which were shared with NPR. Aid groups say the military now requires prior notification to enter these areas. With more than 400 aid workers killed in Gaza throughout the war, aid groups have suspended operations in northern Gaza’s orange
zone until the situation is fully clarified.

Israel’s military did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Residents of al-Shujaiya told NPR that aid operations have been halted in their neighborhood since March, and ambulances need Israeli permission to enter.

People living in the so-called orange zone of control say Israeli tank shelling and gunfire intensifies in the evening. Random bursts of tank fire are heard throughout the day.

“Homes here get hit by Israeli fire because they’re trying to push us out of here, or at least these eastern parts,” Humeid said. “But we can’t leave this area. This is where we grew up, where our parents and grandparents lived.”

Israel’s plans to control more territory

Tents stand amid the rubble of destroyed homes in al-Shujaiya, Gaza Strip, where displaced families endure harsh living conditions inside a new orange zone with nowhere else to go, on May 31.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military’s expanding footprint in Gaza is part of a step-by-step plan to surround Hamas from all sides, despite the U.S.-brokered ceasefire.

He told an audience in May that when the ceasefire began, Israel controlled half of Gaza, and then expanded that control to 60% of the territory. A man in the audience yelled out that the next step should be 100% control.

“First, 70%. Let’s go for that,” Netanyahu responded. “We’re hitting them from every direction,” he said.

On the ground, there are no markers indicating where the orange zone begins and ends. The original yellow line of control — which last year marked the border between Israeli-controlled Gaza and areas run by Hamas — is also moving deeper into Gaza, and is only partially marked in places.

The United Nations humanitarian office says around 200 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since the start of the ceasefire in areas of Gaza close to the military’s shifting lines of control along its yellow and orange lines. They are among the more than 1,000 who have been killed across the devastated territory in that same period, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

A large Israeli flag waves in the distance over a landscape of destruction and debris in Gaza near the border with Israel.

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Israel’s military has commented on some of these attacks, saying its forces shot in self-defense at people it says posed an immediate threat to troops. The U.N. says a third of those killed have been women and children.

In a joint statement, U.N. agencies and aid groups criticized Israel’s moving lines of control, saying this is restricting access to aid for thousands of families and leading to lethal Israeli killings of people moving through areas lacking clear demarcation on the ground.

A ghost town of shelling and gunfire

A man fills a jug from from a rigged waterline in al-Shujaiya, but the nearest source of potable drinking water is 30 minutes away.

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At the start of the ceasefire, 500 families lived in al-Shujaiya. Today, fewer than 50 families remain. The neighborhood is a moonscape of rubble and debris, but it was once a thriving neighborhood of more than 100,000 people before the war.

Now, the closest source of drinking water is a half-hour walk away. There are no clinics, bakeries or shops in the area.

“You get scared to catch a bullet just walking or a missile and be blown apart,” said local resident Saeed al-Hattab. “It’s terrifying. It’s very dangerous to go outside after sunset,” he added.

NPR witnessed a ghost town with few people on the streets, even during the day.

Piles of uncollected garbage and debris line a deserted street in al-Shuja’iyya, a neighborhood, lacking basic services and aid due to israel restrictions as expanding the orange zone.

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“People are scared to live in al-Shujaiya, and we’re scared, but we have no choice but to live here,” al-Hattab said.

He and his wife, Niveen al-Hattab, live with their younger son in a ground-floor shop, under their destroyed apartment building.

The couple’s 27-year-old daughter was killed when the family fled al-Shujaiya to another part of Gaza City during the war. She’s among more than 73,000 people Gaza’s health ministry says were killed in Israeli attacks.

“Where are we supposed to go? I’ve been displaced a lot already,” the mother said, adding their one tent was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike during the war and they cannot find another.

“We don’t know how to live, and we’re sitting in danger because there’s nowhere to go,” she said.