Israel Still Controls Over Half of Gaza — Including the Rubble of My Home

November 3, 2025
Shahad Ali

For thousands of Palestinians, the war hasn’t ended; it will only truly end when we can return to our lands.

In this aerial view, people walk amid the destruction in Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip on October 11, 2025, a day after a ceasefire took effect.

The first phase of the ceasefire agreement, signed by Hamas and Israel in early October after weeks of intense negotiations mediated by Egypt, Qatar, and the United States in Sharm El-Sheikh, resulted in the withdrawal of Israeli forces to what officials referred to as the “Yellow Line.” This initial pullback included areas of Gaza City that the Israeli army had occupied during its military operation called Chariots of Gideon 2, launched in August 2025. But for those of us whose homes sit perilously close to the “Yellow Line,” our neighborhoods have remained a war zone.

The areas Israel has withdrawn from included Al-Jalaa Street and Universities Street in western Gaza City; the Tel al-Hawa and Al-Zaytoun neighborhoods in the southern part of the city; the Sheikh Radwan pond area in the north and Al-Rashid Street in the west; as well as the Abu Hamid area and Bani Suhaila roundabout in the center of the city. In addition, Israeli forces withdrew from central Khan Yunis and some parts of the eastern areas after five months of full occupation.
However, according to the withdrawal maps, Israeli forces still control 58 percent of the Gaza Strip, labeling these regions as “areas within the Yellow Line.” This includes Rafah; parts of the Al-Zaytoun, Al-Shujaiya, and Tuffah neighborhoods in eastern Gaza City; Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun in the northern governorate; and certain areas in eastern Khan Yunis.
Unlike many evacuees who were permitted to return, residents of those regions were barred from going back to their homes. Israeli War Minister Israel Katz announced that the army would place clear markings along the “Yellow Line” in the Gaza Strip as a warning to both “Hamas terrorists and Gaza residents that any violation and attempt to cross the line will be met with fire.”
The Israeli forces even impose fire control over areas beyond the “Yellow Line,” which they describe as adjacent to it. According to the withdrawal maps, the area where my destroyed home once stood — in the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood — lies approximately 300 meters away from the Yellow Line. A group of residents from my neighborhood decided to go there and set up their tents, but Israeli forces stationed nearby opened direct fire on them, even though the area is located outside the Yellow Line.
“I went with my brothers to check on the remains of our home, which I hadn’t been allowed to reach for six months because Israeli forces were there,” my neighbor, Ahmed Matar, 36, said. “For a moment, I thought our area was safe since it lies outside the Yellow Line, but as soon as we arrived, a quadcopter began firing and dropping bombs randomly, and artillery shelling intensified. We survived only by a miracle.”
The issue of the Yellow Line and the occupied areas has spoiled the joy of many Gazans who had eagerly awaited the ceasefire, hoping to return to their neighborhoods — even though they are fully aware that everything there has been completely destroyed. They have had enough of living in exile, far from the places where they were born and raised, confined to overcrowded camps that lack the basic necessities of life and privacy. They dreamed of rebuilding their lives once more in their own neighborhoods — to breathe its air, to touch its soil, to pitch their tents over the rubble of their destroyed homes — but all these dreams were shattered.
Gazans affected by this situation are living every single day in fear of never being able to return to their lands. Our worst fear is that the “Yellow Line” might ultimately become a new border for Israel. According to the Trump administration’s plan, the second phase of the ceasefire would later include a withdrawal from the remaining areas up to the buffer zone along the Strip, which constitutes about 16 percent of the Gaza Strip. However, as of now, negotiations regarding the second phase have not yet begun, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is using the fact that Hamas has been unable to recover and hand over the final hostages’ bodies from under the rubble as a pretext to delay the negotiation process and to maintain Israel’s control over those areas, leaving more than 2 million Gazans living on only half of the Strip’s total area.
“I was forced to leave my home in the early days of the war, as the Israeli army classified it as a dangerous war zone,” Fadila Abu Raida, 23, told me. “For two years, we lived in a small tent that my father set up on Al-Mawasi Beach. I feel like a stranger there; I still haven’t gotten used to life away from my neighborhood.”
Abu Raida, a resident of Gaza who has not been allowed to return to her neighborhood of Khuzaa in eastern Khan Yunis, added: “No place can ever replace the one where you were born — even the air in your homeland feels different from anywhere else. Every day, I dream of the moment I can return. I am truly exhausted from living this humiliating life. For me, and for thousands of Gazans, the war hasn’t ended; it will only truly end when we can return to our lands.”