Hamas accuses Israel of shifting ‘yellow line’ and triggering new wave of displacement
The Palestinian group has accused Israel of repeatedly breaching the so-called yellow line in the Gaza Strip, to which Israeli troops withdrew under the ceasefire, saying the violations have forced large numbers of Palestinians to flee yet again.
Hazem Qassem, a spokesperson for the group, said Israeli forces are shifting the yellow line westward on a daily basis, calling it a “flagrant breach” of the understandings tied to the ceasefire and one that is triggering new waves of displacement.
He urged mediators to pressure Israel to immediately halt these ongoing violations.
Israel aims to keep Gaza ‘unlivable’ or provoke retaliation to resume war
Israel has spent more than two years turning Gaza “to ash and dust” and it won’t “relent easily” despite the ceasefire, an analyst says.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a “two-dimensional plan” to ensure the war on Gaza doesn’t stop, said Muhammad Shehada, a political analyst from Gaza and a visiting fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations.
“Either Gaza stays permanently as a refugee camp in ruins that is unlivable, uninhabitable, and that sustains conditions that are designed to bring about collapse to life there … or Hamas retaliates and Israel uses it as an excuse to resume the genocide,” Shehada told Al Jazeera from Copenhagen.
Israeli forces have consistently attempted to “provoke a retaliation” by killing as many Palestinians as US President Donald Trump’s administration “would allow them to get away with”, Shehada said.
“So the picture that you have right now is Trump has put Netanyahu on a dog leash. He’s not allowed to collapse the ceasefire explicitly, but that dog leash is very loose – it allows him to get away with a lot.”
By carrying out “massacres” and killing dozens of Palestinians, Netanyahu is trying to portray a “spectacular display of violence designed to collapse the ceasefire” while blaming the Palestinians for it, said Shehada.
Both are genocide "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part" continues regardless of the 'ceasefire'.
