Netanyahu Wants 70% of Gaza. The Crowd Wanted 100%. He Said 'Let's Go.'

What 'Ceasefire' Looks Like From Inside an Orange Zone

NPR reporters Anas Baba and Aya Batrawy spent time in al-Shujaiya, a neighborhood in eastern Gaza City that now sits inside what Israel's military calls the "orange zone" of control. The people who live there described a rhythm of fear so normalized it barely registers as extraordinary anymore: card games in the afternoon, prayers at sunset, and then everyone goes inside and waits.

"After sunset we put our hand on our heart and just pray," one resident, Abu Ahmed Humeid, told NPR. "No one dares go outside." That's because after dark, the tank fire picks up. During the day, there are random bursts. The orange zone has no visible markers on the ground, so residents have no way of knowing exactly where the military boundary is. They just know that fire comes from that direction.

Aid operations in al-Shujaiya have been suspended since March, NPR reports. Ambulances cannot enter without Israeli military permission. Over 400 aid workers have been killed in Gaza throughout the course of this war, and groups operating in the orange zone have halted activities until they get clarity on the situation. Israel's military did not respond to multiple requests for comment from NPR.

The Math of Military Expansion

When the ceasefire began in October, Israel controlled roughly half of Gaza, along what the military calls the "yellow line." According to NPR's analysis of maps distributed to aid groups, Israel now controls nearly 70% of the territory. That expansion did not happen quietly.

In mid-March, while global attention was focused on the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, Israeli troops designated a new north-to-south "orange zone," adding about 10% more territory to their area of control in one move. NPR obtained the maps that Israel's military used to notify aid organizations of the new zone. Those organizations now must give prior notification before entering these areas.

The United Nations humanitarian office says approximately 200 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces near the military's shifting lines of control since the ceasefire began. That's just the people killed near the lines. Gaza's health ministry puts the total killed across the territory in that same period at more than 1,000.

Netanyahu Said the Quiet Part Into a Microphone

To be fair to Benjamin Netanyahu, he has not been hiding any of this. In May, he told an audience that when the ceasefire started, Israel controlled half of Gaza, and had since expanded that to 60% of the territory. A man in the crowd yelled that Israel should take 100%.

Netanyahu's response, which NPR reports directly: "First, 70%. Let's go for that." He added, "We're hitting them from every direction."

This is the prime minister of Israel, in the middle of a U.S.-brokered ceasefire, describing a step-by-step plan to take over the entire territory on an incremental basis. He said this out loud. In public. To applause.

The Peace Plan That Isn't Moving

President Trump's peace plan, which calls for an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, new governance in the territory, and Hamas' disarmament, has stalled. NPR describes it as having stalled "nine months after the ceasefire was brokered." That is not a plan that is close to implementation. That is a plan that is sitting in a drawer while the situation on the ground moves in the opposite direction.

The people NPR found in al-Shujaiya are, by almost any measure, trapped. They have no functioning aid system in their neighborhood, no safe hours outdoors, and no prospect of the political settlement that was supposed to change their circumstances. "Homes here get hit by Israeli fire because they're trying to push us out of here," Humeid told NPR. "But we can't leave this area. This is where we grew up, where our parents and grandparents lived."

Israeli tanks are now visible from residential areas in al-Shujaiya, maneuvering around new military posts marked by Israeli flags. The yellow line that used to mark the border between Israeli-controlled Gaza and Hamas-run territory is also shifting, NPR reports, moving deeper into the territory and only partially marked in places.

What the Civilians Are Actually Doing

In the rubble of al-Shujaiya, the al-Hattab family takes turns filling water jugs at what used to be their home. They are among the few Palestinians still living inside Israel's expanding zone of control. NPR photographed children playing on a trampoline in Beit Lahia, in the militarized orange zone, in late May. You work with what you have.

A 60-year-old grandfather named Subhi Shurabasi shelters with his sons, their wives, and his grandchildren inside the ruins of their destroyed home. Families are huddled under tents made of worn-out tarps in the rubble. The men playing cards described life as "boring," which, under the circumstances, is either a remarkable act of understatement or the only way a person can keep moving forward when the alternative is despair.