Mapping the 'Yellow Line': How Israeli Expansion Continues to Constrict Palestinians in Gaza

Israel has expanded its military occupation in the Gaza Strip in violation of a United States-brokered 'ceasefire', forcing Palestinians into an ever-smaller share of the besieged territory, devastated by Israel's ongoing genocidal war. Nearly two-thirds of Gaza is now under Israeli military control or subject to access restrictions. The original 'Yellow Line', established under US President Donald Trump's 20-point plan to end the war, marked the area to which Israeli forces initially withdrew. They were expected to make further withdrawals gradually, but instead, they have seized more territory.

On Sunday, Israeli forces moved yellow concrete blocks dozens of metres west in Shujayea, a neighbourhood in southeastern Gaza City, forcing Palestinian families to flee and bringing more of the neighbourhood under Israeli military control. "It's not simply about where the 'Yellow Line' is today but where it can move next," Al Jazeera's Ibrahim al-Khalili said, reporting from Gaza City. "For families who have been repeatedly displaced in the past three years, the situation remains dire, and they have to make the impossible decision of where they can go." More than 90 percent of Gaza's 2.1 million population has been forcibly displaced by Israel's war, launched on October 7, 2023, after Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel.

Before the war, Palestinians were spread across the Gaza Strip, a 365sq km (141sq-mile) territory roughly 41km (25 miles) long and from 6km to 12km (4 to 7 miles) wide. That made it one of the most densely populated places on Earth with about 6,000 people per square kilometre. In 2010, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimated that the restricted area covered 17 percent of Gaza's land and 35 percent of its farmland. Gaza has been under an Israeli land, air and sea blockade since 2007.

Under the first phase of the "ceasefire", Israeli forces were to withdraw to the "Yellow Line" within 24 hours, after which a 72-hour period began for the handover of Israeli captives held in Gaza. Donald Trump first published a map of the line on his Truth Social platform. The line left Israel in control of 53 percent of the Strip, mostly farmland and border areas in the east, and confined Palestinians to the remaining 47 percent. By October 2025, two years of war had killed more than 67,000 Palestinians, reducing Gaza's population to about 2.1 million, while population density doubled.

Since the "ceasefire", Israeli forces have repeatedly moved the yellow concrete blocks marking the "Yellow Line" farther west, expanding the areas under their control. The research group Forensic Architecture estimated that Israel controlled 58 percent of Gaza by December. In March, the Israeli military sent aid agencies maps of a new "orange line", a restricted zone beyond the "Yellow Line" where humanitarian movements must be coordinated with the army. According to OCHA, restrictions now cover 65 percent of Gaza, while Israel itself said it controls about 70 percent of the territory, a UN official told the Security Council in June.

That leaves 2.1 million people in about 35 percent of the Strip, roughly 128sq km (49sq miles). The UN Satellite Centre, UNOSAT, found 82 percent of structures in the Strip are damaged or destroyed, and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization says only 3 percent of Gaza's cropland is both undamaged and accessible. OCHA notes that the remaining 35 percent is "already overcrowded", with more than 950,000 people living in displacement sites at risk of flooding. Approaching the 'Yellow Line' remains deadly, as Israel treats areas beyond it as a free-fire zone where nearly 1,500 people have been killed since the ceasefire was announced.