Beginning last November, an Israeli soldier and members of his reserve unit worked day after day in a northern section of the Gaza Strip to create a wasteland.

Their orders were to clear a 1-kilometer-wide area along the border, the soldier said, as part of an Israeli plan to construct a security zone just inside Gaza—to which Palestinians would be barred entry.

A kilometer-wide zone likely wouldn’t prevent future rocket launches or drone attacks from within Gaza by Hamas fighters and other militants who survive the war, analysts said.

Shaul Arieli, a former Israeli colonel who served in Israel’s Gaza division and is now an expert on Israeli borders, said the creation of a permanent buffer zone inside Gaza likely would be illegal under international law because Israel would be assuming control of land beyond its recognized territory and, as an occupying power, would be prohibited from altering boundaries.

Archive link to the full article

  • athos77@kbin.social
    32·
    10 months ago

    For context: the border between Israel and Gaza is 36 miles long. 1 kilometer is (roughly) 0.6 miles. And they’re creating this ‘buffer zone’ on Gazan land.

    Alright, so 36 miles long times 0.6 miles wide - they want to steal 21.6 square miles of Gazan territory (in addition to all the other killing and looting they’re doing). The entirety of Gaza is only 140.9 square miles, so they’re talking about essentially stealing 15% of all Gazan land here.

    Fuck Israel. They want a buffer zone, build it on their own fucking land. They already have over 8367 square miles, 21 square miles is literally just a rounding error to them.

      • athos77@kbin.social
        3·
        10 months ago

        A rounding error is the difference between an actual value and the value when rounded to the nearest whole integer. Like, when 1.25 gets rounded to just 1, the “lost” .25 is a rounding error.

        21.6 / 8367 = 0.00258157046 . That’s roughly 1/4 of one percent. That’s a rounding error.