Israel plans buffer zone in Gaza after Hamas war

Israel will enforce a buffer zone within the Gaza Strip once the war with Hamas is over, Israel’s agriculture minister Avi Dichter said on Thursday.

Israel has been bombarding Hamas targets in Gaza since the Palestinian militant group carried out a devastating attack on Israel almost two weeks ago, and is widely expected to launch a ground operation in the territory.

But while prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has said that Israel’s goal is to destroy Hamas, his government has been reticent about its plans for the enclave – which Israel and Egypt have subjected to a crippling blockade since Hamas seized power in 2007 – once the war has ended. In comments that appeared to refer to establishing a buffer zone in the coastal strip, Eli Cohen, Israel’s foreign minister, said on Wednesday that “at the end of this war, not only will Hamas no longer be in Gaza, but the territory of Gaza will also decrease”.

Asked about these comments and the possibility of establishing a buffer zone inside Gaza, Mr Dichter – who was previously head of Israel’s Shin Bet domestic security agency – said on Thursday that the current situation, in which the bulk of Israel’s border security infrastructure was several hundred metres inside Israeli territory, was no longer tenable.

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“It’s not that you started it from inside the Gaza Strip, as a buffer zone. You started it on the Israeli side – 50 to 100 metres inside... We understand it was a mistake, it has to be fixed,” he told a media briefing in Sderot.

“On the Gaza Strip all along, we will have a margin. And they will not be able to get in. It will be a fire zone. And no matter who you are, you will never be able to come close to the Israeli border.”

Israel previously maintained a buffer zone inside Gaza after it withdrew from the strip in 2005. But over the years the buffer was eroded, in part as a result of indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas to ease the blockade on Gaza, which is home to 2.3 million Palestinians.

Mr Dichter said the width of any future buffer zone would have to be decided “according to the area, the needs of the military, according to the distance of the Israeli military or the Israeli settlements”.

“We have Kibbutz Nahal Oz that is 800 metres from the border. So you need to take more precautions in such an area,” he said. “The whole contour of the Gaza Strip, it doesn’t allow us to take risks. We have seen what happened when we took risks. It was a mistake we are not going to repeat.”

Hamas militants killed more than 1,400 people, injured more than 3,500 and took at least 203 hostage during their attack on October 7th, according to Israeli officials, as well as penetrating as much as 20km into Israeli territory. Israel’s strikes on Gaza have killed nearly 4,000 people and injured almost 12,500 others, according to Palestinian officials.

“Obviously Gaza tomorrow will not look anything like it did before October 7th. Hamas will be dismantled, as will Islamic Jihad, and they won’t be able to attack Israel again,” said another Israeli official.

“How it looks territorially ... we don’t have the details, but that is our objective: There won’t be any terrorists on our border like there was before.” – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2023