Israel’s ‘Green Rafah’ plan aims to fragment Gaza, experts say Analysts warn Israel’s new administrative zones seek to erase the Palestinian cause and force mass displacement.

Buildings lie in ruins amidst the rubble in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, December 8, 2025 [Nir Elias/Reuters]

By Mohammad Mansour

Published On 9 Aug 20269 Aug 2026

Israel has quietly given the green light for infrastructure work to begin in a designated area of southern Gaza, according to Israeli media, as it advances a post-war vision that experts warn is designed to reshape reality on the ground and permanently fragment the enclave.

Dubbed “Green Rafah”, the project backed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz is in eastern Rafah near the unilaterally imposed “Yellow Line”, the effective Israeli buffer zone squeezing Palestinians into smaller areas.

Army Radio, which reported the approval on Sunday, said the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office described the initiative as an Emirati-backed pilot project aimed at establishing temporary housing “free” of the influence of the Palestinian group Hamas.

While the Israeli military will reportedly supervise the installation of water, sewage and electrical infrastructure, Palestinian labourers will be subjected to intense security screenings by the Shin Bet intelligence agency.

Furthermore, strict limitations have been imposed on the project, with Israeli authorities reportedly banning the entry of “caravans” or mobile homes into the area until at least November.

Also on Sunday, Netanyahu said he rejects the 15-point plan for Gaza announced last month by the United States-led Board of Peace.

The plan calls for the disarmament of Hamas in stages and the phased withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Strip, but Netanyahu said an Israeli pull-out won’t happen until Hamas is fully disarmed.

As political negotiations over the future of Gaza stall, Palestinian political researcher Ahmed al-Atawneh warned that projects such as “Green Rafah” are designed to create isolated cantons under total Israeli administrative and security control. With this framework, he argued, Israel leaves Palestinians with only three choices: “Either they fully submit to Israeli policies, face death or imprisonment if they resist, or emigrate.”

Far from providing genuine humanitarian relief, al-Atawneh said Israel’s strategy relies on stripping the Palestinian struggle of its political dimension.

“Treating Palestinians merely as residents rather than citizens with a national cause means, in practice, undermining and liquidating the Palestinian cause,” he said, adding that this approach aligns with the broad consensus in the Israeli parliament rejecting any Palestinian political entity.

Al-Atawneh further criticised Arab involvement in such frameworks outside of a unified Palestinian consensus. “If any country is involved in this project based on the Israeli vision and away from the Palestinians, it raises many questions and essentially serves Israeli policy, rather than genuinely assisting or relieving Palestinians,” he added.

The Israeli ban on mobile homes and delay of meaningful reconstruction of civilian infrastructure carry deep strategic implications, according to experts.

Mohammad Hamed al-Aila, a Palestinian researcher, pointed out that the humanitarian protocol attached to a ceasefire agreement signed last year in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh explicitly mandates the entry of temporary housing (caravans) and repair of civilian infrastructure.

“Israel has not adhered to these obligations, despite 10 months passing since” the signing of a ceasefire deal, said al-Aila, noting that Israel continues to stall while Hamas demands the full implementation of the first phase.

“Preventing the entry of caravans and postponing any serious reconstruction track cannot be separated from the broader Israeli goal of perpetuating the humanitarian catastrophe,” said al-Aila. “Israel views the humanitarian situation in Gaza as a tool of political pressure aimed at gradually pushing the population towards migration.”

Al-Atawneh agreed, suggesting that Netanyahu is using these delays to buy time ahead of Israel’s elections in October in an effort to preserve his far-right-wing coalition, all while pursuing long-term goals of demographic engineering and displacement.

The international force dilemma

In tandem with these administrative zones, preparations are moving forward to deploy a limited International Stabilization Force (ISF). Reports indicate that countries such as Morocco and Uganda may send small contingents of around 200 troops each, falling drastically short of initial plans for a much larger multinational force.

Al-Aila argued that these token numbers reflect Israel’s traditional tactic of superficially accepting US proposals while hollowing out their actual implementation.... READ MORE  https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/9/israels-green-rafah-plan-aims-to-fragment-gaza-experts-say

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"Hossam Shabat and Mohammad Mansour were the latest Palestinian journalists to be assassinated in Gaza. Responsibility for their killings rests in part on their Western colleagues who have failed to accurately cover Israel's genocidal assault. "

All the Palestinian journalists in the photo were recently martyred in GAZA, after showing the truth to a blind world.

Gaza in 2025- Palestine is the most well-documented genocide in history, yet the most denied.

To be clear- Wikipedia on what a MARTYR was and is:

A martyr (Greek: μάρτυς, mártys, 'witness' stem μαρτυρ-, martyr-) is someone who suffers persecution and death for advocating, renouncing, or refusing to renounce or advocate, a religious belief or other cause as demanded by an external party. In colloquial usage, the term can also refer to any person who suffers a significant consequence in protest or support of a cause. 

Miniature from the Menologion of Basil II depicting the 20,000 Martyrs of Nicomedia, who were martyred when Roman soldiers set their church on fire on Christmas Day, AD 302

In its original meaning, the word martyr, meaning witness, was used in the secular sphere as well as in the New Testament of the Bible.^[4] The process of bearing witness was not intended to lead to the death of the witness, although it is known from ancient writers (e.g., Josephus) and from the New Testament that witnesses often died for their testimonies. 

In Palestine, the word ‘martyr’ is traditionally used to mean a person killed by Israeli forces, regardless of religion.^[15][16] For example, Shireen Abu Akleh was a Palestinian Christian journalist who was killed by Israeli forces, and Arabic media calls her a ‘martyr’.^[17] This reflects a communal belief that every Palestinian death is part of a resistance against Israeli occupation.^[18] Children are likewise called martyrs, such as the late children of journalist Wael Al-Dahdouh who were killed in an Israeli airstrike.^[19]

Palestinian-American Shireen Abu Akleh overlooking the Old City of Jerusalem

Shireen Abu Akleh^[a] (Arabic: شيرين أبو عاقلة, romanized: Šīrīn Abū ʿĀqila; April 3, 1971 – May 11, 2022) was a prominent Palestinian-American journalist who worked as a reporter for 25 years for Al Jazeera, before she was killed by Israeli forces while wearing a blue press vest and covering a raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Abu Akleh was one of the most prominent names across the Middle East for her decades of reporting in the Palestinian territories, and seen as a role model for many Arab and Palestinian women.^[5][6] She is considered to be an icon of Palestinian journalism.^[7]

How Western media silence enables the killing of Palestinian journalists

Hossam Shabat and Mohammad Mansour were the latest Palestinian journalists to be assassinated in Gaza. Responsibility for their killings rests in part on their Western colleagues who have failed to accurately cover Israel's genocidal assault.

By Ahmad Ibsais March 25, 2025  

Palestinian journalists lift placards during a rally in protest of the killing of fellow reporters Hussam Shabat and Muhammad Mansour in Israeli strikes a day earlier, in Gaza City on March 25, 2025. (Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images)

On March 24, 2025, we witnessed the deliberate killing of yet another Palestinian journalist. Hossam Shabat, a 24-year-old reporter for Al Jazeera Mubasher and contributor to Drop Site News, was assassinated in an Israeli airstrike targeting his vehicle in northern Gaza. Hours earlier, Mohammad Mansour, a correspondent for Palestine Today, was also killed in Khan Younis.

These were not accidents. These were not casualties of “crossfire” or “clashes.” These were targeted assassinations designed to silence those who document the truth about Gaza.

“If you’re reading this, it means I have been killed—most likely targeted—by the Israeli occupation forces,” wrote Hossam in a final message shared by his team. His words now stand as both testament and indictment. “I documented the horrors in northern Gaza minute by minute, determined to show the world the truth they tried to bury.”

The Israeli military placed Hossam and five other Palestinian journalists on a hit list in October 2024. He regularly received death threats by call and text. Yesterday, that threat was carried out.

When this genocide began, Hossam was just 21 years old—a college student studying journalism who could not have imagined his future. “Little did I know I would be given one of the hardest jobs in the world: to cover the genocide of my own people,” he wrote about a year ago.

Since October 2023, at least 208 Palestinian journalists have been killed by Israeli forces. This is not collateral damage—it is a systematic campaign to eliminate witnesses. By targeting journalists, Israel seeks to control the narrative, to ensure that its actions in Gaza occur in darkness, free from the scrutiny of international law and public opinion.

The idea that Western journalists are responsible for Hossam’s martyrdom today is not a slogan. Their total journalistic malpractice and regurgitation of Zionist propaganda has left Palestinian journalists exposed, as a precious few who publish the truth, and, therefore: targets. Their failure to accurately report on the targeting of their colleagues, their reluctance to challenge Israeli narratives, and their tendency to frame these killings as unfortunate byproducts of conflict rather than deliberate acts—these journalistic failures have real consequences. They have left Palestinian journalists vulnerable, bearing alone the responsibility of documenting atrocities that many Western outlets refuse to acknowledge.

Hossam embodied resilience in the face of this isolation. “I say to the world, I am continuing. I am covering the events with an empty stomach, steadfast and persevering,” he once said in an interview. Hours before his death, he filed a story about Israel’s renewed bombing campaign that killed over 400 people, including nearly 200 children, in just hours. “I want to share the text urgently,” he wrote, desperate to ensure the world would know.

For 492 days, Hossam survived in conditions most journalists will never experience. He “slept on pavements, in schools, in tents—anywhere I could,” he wrote. “Each day was a battle for survival. I endured hunger for months, yet I never left my people’s side.”

The father of Mohammad Mansour, the other journalist killed yesterday, spoke words that should haunt every newsroom: “Stand up and speak, tell the world, you are the one who tells the truth, for the image alone is not enough.”

Yet most Western journalists remain silent about the systematic killing of their Palestinian colleagues. The International Federation of Journalists has documented by name those killed or injured, but these deaths rarely receive the coverage or outrage they deserve. When journalists are targeted anywhere else in the world, press freedom organizations and major news outlets rightfully condemn such attacks. The silence surrounding Palestinian journalists speaks volumes.

True journalism means acknowledging uncomfortable truths: that these journalists were not killed accidentally but deliberately targeted; that their deaths serve to obscure war crimes; that the weapons used to kill them often come from the same countries whose media fails to report accurately on their deaths.

In his final message, Hossam made a request: “Do not stop speaking about Gaza. Do not let the world look away. Keep fighting, keep telling our stories—until Palestine is free.”

Western journalists have a moral and professional obligation to honor this request. They must accurately report on the targeting of their colleagues. They must challenge narratives that dismiss these killings as unfortunate accidents. They must recognize that their silence makes them complicit.

Hossam concluded, “By God, I fulfilled my duty as a journalist.” The question now is whether Western journalists will fulfill theirs.

News on Palestine you can trust

Thank you for reading this article. Before you go, we want to ask for your help. The Israeli government announced they will spend an additional $150 Million on propaganda in 2025. With the help of mainstream media, they are trying to sway public opinion over the genocide in Gaza.

https://mondoweiss.net/2025/03/how-western-media-silence-enables-the-killing-of-palestinian-journalists/

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American Classroom Globe of the 1940s

حسام شبات

@HossamShabat

·

Mar 24

"This is Hossam’s team, and we are sharing his final message : 

 

“If you’re reading this, it means I have been killed—most likely targeted—by the Israeli occupation forces. 

 

When this all began, I was only 21 years old—a college student with dreams like anyone else. 

 

For past 18 months, I have dedicated every moment of my life to my people. 

 

I documented the horrors in northern Gaza minute by minute, determined to show the world the truth they tried to bury. 

 

I slept on pavements, in schools, in tents—anywhere I could. 

 

Each day was a battle for survival. I endured hunger for months, yet I never left my people’s side. 

 

By God, I fulfilled my duty as a journalist. I risked everything to report the truth, and now, I am finally at rest—something I haven’t known in the past 18 months . 

 

I did all this because I believe in the Palestinian cause. I believe this land is ours, and it has been the highest honor of my life to die defending it and serving its people. 

 

I ask you now: do not stop speaking about Gaza. Do not let the world look away. Keep fighting, keep telling our stories—until Palestine is free.” 

 

— For the last time, Hossam Shabat, from northern Gaza."

 

Israel targets and kills Hossam Shabat hours after killing his colleague Mohammad Mansour

124 journalist were killed around the world in 2024, around two-thirds of them were Palestinian.