Israel Drew the Boundaries—Now They’re Trapped Behind Them

Right, so when it comes to wars of territory, getting away with seizing what isn’t yours especially, optics are often more powerful than artillery. For decades, Israel has carefully constructed an image of its military campaigns in Palestine more broadly and Gaza most recently as unfortunate necessities—tragic but defensive, bloody but justified. Its all about Hamas, its all about Israeli national security, there’s supposedly some hostages to be concerned about too, but who in Israel mentions them these days? But nothing quite ruins that narrative like a leak does it? A recently leaked Israeli government plan, has obliterated that that Israeli narrative and reinforced the more obvious designs of the genocidal apartheid state amidst all of its talk of a concentration camp in Rafah and isolating and splitting up the Gazan populace. The document reveals a blueprint for the permanent seizure of 40% of the Gaza Strip and the denial of return for approximately 700,000 displaced Palestinians from northern and central Gaza. It confirms what many Palestinians, legal experts, and human rights organisations have long warned: Israel is not just fighting Hamas. It is a clear-cut plan for ethnic cleansing and we’ve got to talk about it, because mainstream media largely aren’t again.
Right, so coming as this has in the midst of what are faltering ceasefire talks in Doha, performative as they have been on Israel’s part from the get go, the timing of the leak could not be more worse for Netanyahu and his rancid coalition government. What had previously been claimed to be war strategy on their part, has been blatantly exposed as long-term population engineering, ethnic cleansing and more land seizure. The implications are devastating—not just for the people of Gaza, but for Israel itself. Diplomatically, legally, and strategically, this revelation is utterly indefensible and an absolute disaster of Israel’s own making. The leaked plan is not just morally reprehensible, but a profound strategic blunder that exposes Israel to unprecedented legal jeopardy, geopolitical backlash, and moral condemnation – but as ever, the question remains, will this even happen when exceptions keep getting made for Israel?
According to documents obtained by Quds News Network and corroborated by sources close to the ceasefire negotiations, the Israeli government has mapped out a plan to maintain military and administrative control over approximately 40% of Gaza’s territory. This includes northern Gaza, areas east of Khan Younis, and the Philadelphi Corridor near Rafah. The black line shows the current border wall, the red line within, shows what will be left of Gaza going forwards, all the land between those lines Israel will seize for itself. More crucially, the plan makes clear that the estimated 700,000 Palestinians displaced from northern and central will not be permitted to return.
This map, along with others in the document leak, are reminiscent of Bantustans in apartheid-era South Africa, mapped out blueprints of division.
Instead, these displaced persons are to be concentrated in what Israel is calling a “humanitarian city” in the Rafah border zone, but which the world is becoming more aware of and being compared to the concentration camps of Nazi era Europe instead. Designed to be a one-way zone with controlled entry but no exit, it really can’t be described as anything else. According to reporting from The Washington Post and Associated Press, Israeli officials are marketing this as a safe zone for civilians, and we were all born yesterday. Critics are rightly arguing by contrast, that all of this very much bears the unmistakable architecture of ethnic containment and population removal.
Israel’s deranged Defense Minister Israel Katz, has been the plan's most vocal proponent. His statements to Israeli media and foreign diplomats have emphasised the need to "prevent the return of hostile elements" to areas "critical for security." However, no distinction is made between Hamas fighters and displaced civilians, this has been one of the defning characteristics of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the reason that over 57,000 people have officially been killed, but actually 10% of the entire population can’t be accounted for. It is a conflation that undercuts the entire premise of international humanitarian law. Katz has also hinted at economic motives, suggesting that these areas would be redeveloped for Israeli-controlled infrastructure and "regional partnerships" making it all the more depraved. One thing he didn’t mention in all of this gumpf? The hostages.
This plan, if enacted, would mark one of the most overt cases of ethnic cleansing in the modern Middle East. Under international law, particularly the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the forced displacement of civilians and the denial of their right to return are recognized as crimes against humanity. Article 7 specifically addresses "deportation or forcible transfer of population" and "persecution against any identifiable group," both of which are evident here.
The Geneva Conventions also prohibit the occupying power from transferring or displacing populations for reasons other than immediate military necessity. Yet the leaked plan reveals not a temporary evacuation, but a long-term demographic reengineering and land seizure.
Moreover, the construction of a single-entry "humanitarian zone" – concentration camp - without provisions for return or movement constitutes internment on a mass scale. Legal experts cited by The Wall Street Journal and AP have now literally said this could qualify as a modern day concentration camp, especially given the militarised control and the one-way nature of movement. It is a humanitarian solution only in name—designed not to protect civilians, but to permanently place them under Israeli control and we know what that looks like by now.
The leak also casts a damning light on Israel's participation in recent ceasefire negotiations in Doha. According to Reuters and Ynet, Israel dispatched a limited delegation to the talks on July 5, under pressure from US and Qatari mediators. However, Israeli sources admitted the delegation lacked authority to agree to core Hamas demands, particularly a full withdrawal from Gaza, because there was no way on Earth Netanyahu and Katz would ever agree to give them such authority, a picture we’ve seen repeated month after month throughout Israel’s genocide.
Precedent has already shown that Israel has often used ceasefires tactically, rather than out of any desire to end atrocities. During conflicts in 2009, 2014, and 2021, declared truces were used to reposition troops, regroup, and then reset the narratives after. Since 2023 what Israel have always done has just become more high profile. This latest round is no exception. Hamas and other negotiating parties have accused Israel of using the talks as cover for expanding military operations and fast-tracking territorial restructuring and these leaked plans appear to bear such views out.
The duplicity thereefore is now undeniable, though we can hazard a guess at who will still very much deny it anyway. But the fact remains now that while Israel publicly discussed humanitarianism and temporary truces, it was privately finalising a map of exclusion and removal. According to mediators in Doha, the Israeli team stonewalled any conversation about permanent withdrawal, a position now understood as linked to this leaked plan.
This duplicity undermines Israel’s credibility as a negotiating partner even more than it already has been and delegitimises its narrative that it seeks peace because they blatantly don’t surely? Hamas, Egypt, and Qatar now have tangible proof that Israel is not negotiating in good faith. In fact, its negotiating position was a cover for a land grab. In the eyes of international observers, this isn't diplomacy. It is out and out deception.
The strategic fallout from this leak is severe and this time, in light of the leaks, probably irreversible. Israel has long counted on international ambiguity to preserve its actions in Gaza. By framing each war as a response to terrorism and casting itself as the West’s frontline democracy, it has successfully neutralised much of the international community’s outrage. But this leak ends that ambiguity completely.
Countries in the Global South—South Africa, Colombia, Brazil, and others—have already condemned the plan as tantamount to genocide. South Africa’s legal challenge at the ICJ will now likely incorporate this new evidence, while European countries that have long tiptoed around the apartheid question will face mounting public pressure to act.
Despite the fact we know they’ll still support Israel anyway, traditional allies like the United States and Germany are still going to find themselves in an awkward position here. US officials have publicly supported ceasefire talks while privately greenlighting Israeli defence measures and arms sales. This leak makes that duality unsustainable. Pick your side, we know what you’re going to pick, but don’t you dare say this is about defence any longer, because Israel have let that cat very much out of the bag. Western governments now have to choose: either break with Israel or be complicit in what has become a textbook case of ethnic cleansing with maps to match.
Benjamin Netanyahu and Former Defence Minister Yoav gallant are already under scrutiny at the International Criminal Court. Netanyahu and present Defence Minister Israel Katz are a focus of Spain’s criminal proceedings. The publication of these plans could serve as crucial evidence of premeditated crimes against humanity. The ICC does not require that a crime be fully executed—planning, ordering, or facilitating such acts is sufficient for prosecution.
Article 7 of the Rome Statute lists as crimes: "deportation or forcible transfer of population," "imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty," and "persecution against any identifiable group." All three apply here. The detailed maps and administrative memos included in the leaked documents demonstrate intent, which is a crucial threshold for ICC cases.
Additionally, the doctrine of universal jurisdiction allows other nations to prosecute war crimes regardless of where they occurred. Spain, Belgium, and South Africa are already exploring legal avenues to hold Israeli leaders accountable. With this leak, the legal threshold for action has surely now been decisively crossed.
It is now being argued that the clarity and specificity of the leaked plan—including those maps and named zones of exclusion—make it one of the most damning pieces of documentary evidence since the apartheid regime in South Africa.
The leak could also energize the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement like never before. Already, companies like Maersk, Coop Alleanza, and Norway’s KLP have severed ties with Israeli firms implicated in settlement activities as I’ve covered in the last few days. Now, institutions that have hesitated—universities, labour unions, even governments—have a fresh, undeniable pretext to act.
The British Medical Association, European cultural bodies, and academic publishers are reconsidering institutional ties with Israeli counterparts. Divestment campaigns in universities across the US and UK are going to be reinvigorated by student movements citing this leaked plan as irrefutable proof of apartheid.
Cultural boycotts will likely intensify. Artists, athletes, and academics can no longer be accused of hyperbole when they call Israel an apartheid state. The evidence is now in black-and-white policy documents and colour maps. Israeli anti-BDS legislation and smear campaigns against activists are losing credibility at the same time.
While the Netanyahu-Katz axis appears united in executing this plan, Katz now cheering doing to Beit Hanoun in the north of Gaza to what has been done to Rafah in the south – flattening it - a show of how unhinged he really is. But despite that, internal fissures are very much widening. Military legal advisors have reportedly warned that the plan could expose IDF officers to international prosecution. Some elements within Shin Bet and the Israeli Supreme Court are alarmed by the long-term strategic costs that will be paid.
Former Mossad and Shin Bet chiefs have voiced concern in private briefings, arguing that international backlash could undermine Israeli intelligence operations and restrict military mobility abroad. Former Prime Ministers Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak have condemned the trajectory, warning that Israel is on a path toward pariah status.
Israeli civil society, including groups like B'Tselem and Breaking the Silence, are sounding the alarm. Even members of the Jewish diaspora are turning critical, with growing divisions within American Jewish organisations and calls for withholding diaspora funding.
The leaked plan is not an aberration. It is a continuation of Zionist settler-colonial logic. From the early days of the Haganah through the Nakba of 1948 to today’s military doctrine, the goal has remained consistent: secure maximum territory with minimal Palestinian presence.
The ideology underpinning this plan can be traced back to figures like Theodor Herzl, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, and David Ben-Gurion. Each envisioned a Jewish state in which Palestinian presence was tolerated only to the extent that it did not threaten Jewish demographic or territorial control. The leaked plan is a modern embodiment of this vision, executed with drones and digital maps instead of rifles and declarations.
Beyond security, the seizure of 40% of Gaza also serves economic aims.
The Philadelphi Corridor, meanwhile, is critical for regional trade and alleged smuggling routes, seized and being held despite being in violation of a peace treaty with Egypt, but then a US minion like their leader Sisi won’t do a thing about that though. Israel's desire to dominate it is as much economic as it is strategic. Infrastructure projects tied to the India-Middle East-Europe Corridor (IMEC) also factor into this calculus, as Israel seeks to exclude Palestinian agencies from regional connectivity, whilst seeking to position itself as very much still a good bet, the proposed IMEC hub of Haifa having taken so much of a bettering from Iran recently.
In effect, this isn't just a security perimeter. It's a resource grab and a power grab.
By confining 700,000 people to a one-way city, a concentration camp, Israel is engaging in psychological warfare, with the clear message being you are not wanted, and you will not return. You will stay here and be treated as we see fit. The trauma of dispossession is compounded by the spectacle of surveillance, military checkpoints, and humanitarian dependency.
This is more than just tactical warfare therefore; it is existential degradation. The use of displacement as a tool of psychological suppression violates Article 33 of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibits collective punishment.
South Africa, Colombia, Malaysia, Brazil, and others have seized on the leak as confirmation of Israeli apartheid. Their statements at the UN General Assembly and international legal bodies are becoming increasingly coordinated. South Africa’s case at the ICJ will likely now include the leaked plan as central evidence.
In doing so, these countries are challenging the post-World War II international order that has consistently shielded Israel.
The symbolism of the leaked plan is as damaging as its content. Palestinians and their supporters have long insisted that the Nakba—the 1948 expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinians—a similar figure actually in what we’re talking about in the here and now, never ended. It didn’t. This plan confirms that view. It is a continuation of the logic of permanent removal, border redrawing, and demographic conquest.
What Israel calls a security perimeter, Palestinians understand as a second Nakba. But unlike in 1948, the entire world is watching in real time and no government can claim they didn’t know.
In revealing its true intentions, as unintentionally as it has happened, Israel has overplayed its hand. The leaked plan is not just an operational roadmap—it is a confession. It admits that the goal is not peace, not rescuing hostages, not even about Hamas, but partition and territorial expansion. Not security, but supremacy. Not defence, but domination.
This will have consequences. It has to have consequences. In courtrooms, on campuses, in parliaments, and on the streets. The world can no longer pretend not to know.
For more on the part BDS is playing in the fight back against Israeli plans and how it may grow more than ever – it certainly has in the last couple of weeks, check out this video recommendation here as your suggested next watch, some big name corporations have backed away from having anything to do with them.
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