GENEVA (The Thursday Times) — Israeli forces are pushing Palestinians into an ever-smaller part of Gaza and appear to be treating their deployment line as “a kill zone”, the UN human rights office said on Friday, warning that their actions continue to raise concerns of ethnic cleansing.
The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said Israeli troops were moving west beyond the so-called Yellow Line, preventing Palestinians from returning to what is left of their homes, destroying remaining civilian infrastructure and attacking displacement sites as the army pursues its stated aim of expanding its deployment area to 70 per cent of the territory.
Over the past two weeks the advance has forced new displacement in Shujayea in Gaza City and in eastern Bureij, Deir el-Balah and al-Maghazi in central Gaza, the office said. In Shujayea, at least two attacks were reported on displacement camps and explosive robots were used to blow up the few buildings still standing. A drone strike on a tent at the Shujayea junction on Sunday started a fire that displaced 200 families, about 800 people, according to Gaza’s public works ministry.
“Those displaced before the announcement of a ceasefire have little to no prospect of return to the areas they fled, most of which are inaccessible because they fall beyond the so-called Yellow Line. And they continue to be displaced again and again,” said Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN rights office in the occupied Palestinian territory.
Gaza’s health ministry says at least 1,574 people have been killed and 5,687 wounded in Israeli attacks since the ceasefire took effect on October 11, 2025, and more than 74,500 since the war began in October 2023. A UN inquiry this week found that Israel had continued committing genocide in Gaza after the ceasefire.
