Since the ceasefire was announced on October 10, the division of Gaza into a so-called “green zone” under Israeli army control and a so-called “red zone”, where Palestinians have been displaced and contained, has solidified. Separating the two is the invisible “yellow line”.The administration of United States President Donald Trump has signalled that reconstruction will be limited to the “green zone” where Israel and its allies have been working on plans for so-called “alternative safe communities”.Although there are reports last week that these plans were dropped, colleagues in the humanitarian field have informed me that the first such community is still slated to be built in Rafah, southern Gaza and a further 10 are planned along the yellow line and into the north.If plans for these “safe communities” proceed, they would cement a deadly fragmentation of Gaza. The purpose of creating these camps is not to provide humanitarian relief but to create zones of managed dispossession where Palestinians would be screened and vetted to enter in order to receive basic services, but would be explicitly barred from returning to the off-limits and blockaded “red zone”.These plans represent a recycled version of what Israel has long wanted to do in Gaza. The creation of “bubbles” – an initial, telling euphemism that I first heard proposed by the Israeli authorities when I was pa …
