Netanyahu Wants to Control 70% of Gaza

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged Thursday that Israel currently controls 60% of the Gaza Strip and signaled plans to expand it further to 70%.

According to Israel’s Channel 12, Netanyahu said during a seminar in the Jordan Valley: “We currently control 60% of the Gaza Strip, and my directives are to move toward controlling 70%.”

He did not elaborate on how such plans would be implemented.

The Israeli army announced in October last year that it controlled 53% of the Gaza Strip after redeploying to the so-called “yellow line” under the first phase of US President Donald Trump’s plan to end the war in Gaza.

The arrangement envisioned further Israeli withdrawals under the second phase, launched in January. The “yellow line” refers to a temporary separation zone in eastern Gaza dividing areas under Israeli military control from areas where Palestinians are allowed to remain.

But Palestinian sources say that the boundary has been steadily pushed westward in recent months.

Bassem Naim, a senior Hamas official, told Anadolu that Israel has shifted the line by an additional 8% to 9% into Gaza’s territory, raising the area under Israeli control to more than 60% according to Anadolu.

The change has reduced the space available to Palestinians to roughly 38% of the enclave, intensifying an already severe humanitarian crisis.

Israel launched a genocidal war in Gaza in October 2023, killing more than 72,000 Palestinians and injuring over 172,000 others, most of them women and children, according to Palestinian figures.

CrossFireArabia

Dr. Marwan Asmar holds a PhD from Leeds University and is a freelance writer specializing on the Middle East. He has worked as a journalist since the early 1990s in Jordan and the Gulf countries, and been widely published, including at Albawaba, Gulf News, Al Ghad, World Press Review and others.

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Israeli Soldier Killed in Lebanon Hikes Up Total to 37

CrossFireArabia
June 25, 2026

CROSSFIREARABIA – Another Israeli soldier was killed, Wednesday, during a military operation in south Lebanon. The Israeli army announced the news the following day, saying as well that one more Israeli soldier was injured in the operation. It stated that the soldier killed was a 32-year-old soldier. He was killed while his vehicle was overturned according to an AFP report.

Since 2 March, 2026 the Israeli army said 36 of its soldiers were killed in southern Lebanon. This is while it pointed out that over 1300 Israeli soldiers were wounded in the fighting with Hezbollah and had to be brought back to Israel.

Independent sources say at least 37 Israeli soldiers were killed in Lebanon with one independent contractor. This is while 1,364 soldiers were injured.

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Gaza: 28,000 Widows Must Serve as Breadwinners

CrossFireArabia
June 24, 2026

Today, there are more than 28,000 widows in Gaza according to the Ministry of Social Development. These widows are living through one of the most severe humanitarian crises in modern history, amidst the ongoing conflict that has led to a surge in the number of women solely bearing the responsibility of supporting their families under exceptionally difficult circumstances.

In a press release, Wednesday, the Ministry revealed a sharp increase in the number of widows during the current war, reaching 28,224, compared to 22,596 before the war began.

Gaza City has recorded the highest percentage of widows at 40.8%, followed by North Gaza at 22.5% with the two northern governorates accounting for more than 70% of the urgent interventions needed to support the families of martyrs, according to the Ministry.

According to official statistics, approximately 64% of widows, or about 16,877 women, are of working age (18-45 years old), necessitating the launch of urgent economic empowerment programs.

The Ministry indicated that elderly widows aged 60 and over constitute 14.9%, while widows under the age of 18 represent about 0.4%.

Last May, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research reported in a research paper the war on Gaza led to an unprecedented increase in the phenomenon of women breadwinners, with the number of widows exceeding 22,000 according to Quds Press.

The center emphasized that addressing this phenomenon requires a comprehensive vision that integrates women breadwinners into the production and reconstruction process, recognizing them as essential elements in social and economic recovery, not merely recipients of aid.

The 23rd of June marks International Widows’ Day, established by the United Nations to highlight the economic and social challenges facing widows, most notably poverty, deprivation of inheritance, and the absence of social protection.

Since October 8, 2023, Israel, with American and European support, has committed genocide in the Gaza Strip, including killing, starvation, destruction, displacement, and arrests, ignoring international appeals and orders from the International Court of Justice to cease its actions.

The genocide left more than 246,000 Palestinians dead or wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 11,000 missing, in addition to the hundreds of thousands of displaced people and a famine that claimed the lives of many, most of them children, as well as widespread destruction and the erasure of most of the cities and areas of the Gaza Strip from the map.