JERUSALEM, Apr 18: By seizing large swathes of the Gaza Strip, Israel is redrawing the map of the Palestinian territory, one of the most densely populated places on Earth, making it increasingly "unlivable".
On Wednesday, Defence Minister Israel Katz said the military has transformed vast areas representing 30 percent of Gaza into buffer zones and displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
Agnes Levallois, lecturer at the Foundation for Strategic Research, said that leaving the buffer zones cleared and empty could be an end in itself.
"Israel's strategy in the Gaza Strip is to make the territory unlivable," she said, with some analysts saying that Israel now controls even more than 30 percent of the territory. An AFP calculation based on maps issued by the military found that the total area under Israeli control was more than 185 square kilometres (about 70 square miles), or around 50 percent of the territory. �"AFP
