TEHRAN — On May 28, at the Ein Prat Leadership Academy inside an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank, Benjamin Netanyahu dropped the final pretense of Washington’s diplomatic framework.

Addressing a sick crowd intoxicated by the prospect of more ethnic cleansing, the Israeli prime minister openly stated that the military had pushed well past the boundaries of the October 2025 ceasefire. “We are fully in control of 60 percent of the Gaza Strip,” he announced, outlining an explicit directive to “incrementally advance to 70%.”

When the audience interrupted with macabre chants of “One hundred! One hundred!”, Netanyahu did not dispute the endgame, replying simply: “First 70%. Let’s start with that.”

This exchange formalized a reality that the reality on the ground and leaked maps had already exposed: the U.S.-brokered truce is being treated not as a constraint, but as a staging ground for deeper territorial control.

The moving lines of impunity

Under the original terms of the ceasefire, Israeli forces were restricted to a demarcation boundary known as the “yellow line,” which covered roughly 53 percent of Gaza.

By March, however, maps shared with humanitarian organizations revealed that forces had unilaterally drawn a new “orange line,” pushing into 64 percent of the territory and effectively rewriting the borders through sheer force.

Condemnations have been swift but materially toothless. The United Nations reiterated that the entirety of Gaza belongs to the Palestinian people, while French and German officials opposed any permanent division of the enclave.

Yet, the UN has continued to document extensive killings and infrastructure destruction even after the truce began, demonstrating that a diplomatic pause is not translating into compliance on the ground.

With over 2,400 documented ceasefire violations and more than 920 Palestinians killed since the truce took effect, the gap between Western diplomatic rhetoric and the reality on the ground is vast.

The ruins of Gaza stand as accumulated proof that American guarantees function as an administrative screen for more aggression, while Israel uses the ceasefire to advance its own territorial footprint.

Engineered chaos

Simultaneously, the military strategy inside Gaza has shifted from dynamic combat to a highly targeted campaign of institutional eradication. In Gaza City’s Al-Rimal neighborhood, a sequence of apartment-block strikes reveals a doctrine designed to dismantle the territory’s civil and internal security apparatus.

On May 15, Izz al-Din al-Haddad, a senior Hamas commander, was killed in an airstrike alongside his wife and daughter. Less than two weeks later, on May 27, his successor, Mohammad Awda, was struck and killed with his own wife and son in an identical manner.

These back-to-back assassinations extend beyond traditional battlefield tactics. By systematically wiping out veteran security leaders and civil police, Israeli forces are engineering a societal vacuum. The objective is to replace Hamas’s administrative grip over humanitarian aid and local order with armed mercenary cliques and proxy gangs.

Assassination as political warfare

This violent attrition extends directly into the negotiating room. The timing of Israel’s killing campaign aligns precisely with Hamas’s most consequential leadership contest in years, as the movement held internal ballots to determine its political direction.

While multiple figures remain in contention, the succession balance currently centers on two primary leaders, namely Khalil al-Hayya, the steadfast Gaza-based leader who spearheads negotiations while fiercely safeguarding the resistance’s right to retain its weapons, having recently survived an Israeli assassination attempt in Doha, and Khaled Meshal, a diaspora figure perceived by regional observers as more amenable to compromise.

Ahead of the Shura Council vote, an Israeli strike in the Al-Daraj neighborhood killed Azzam al-Hayya, the son of the chief negotiator. Eliminating al-Hayya’s son and his closest military allies functions as a coordinated pressure campaign.

It is widely interpreted as an attempt to shape Hamas’s internal succession balance from the outside, disrupting the movement’s cohesion and attempting to blackmail the leadership at the negotiating table.

The regional tug-of-war and the architecture of displacement

This multifaceted campaign unfolds under the shadow of a broader regional conflict. Following the recent U.S.-Israeli campaign of aggression against Iran, Israel has leveraged its multi-front military posture to prevent Palestinian reconstruction while demanding total disarmament.

Conversely, Iran’s successful resilience has provided the resistance in Gaza with greater strategic flexibility, reinforcing the collective position of the entire Axis of Resistance.

Tehran has reportedly called for the rejection of any discussion regarding the disarmament of Hamas within the framework of negotiations. Iran has also reportedly informed Hamas of its intent to address all regional crises, including Gaza and Lebanon, at a single table, a backing that has directly bolstered the position of the Hamas political delegation during recent talks, enabling them to reject second-stage disarmament and firmly demand the execution of the first phase.

Meanwhile, the broader implications of Netanyahu’s 70 percent directive were highlighted by war minister Israel Katz, who recently took to social media to promote a “voluntary emigration plan” to be implemented at a time of the government’s choosing. Human rights organizations, such as the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, have accurately translated this rhetoric as a blueprint for forced evacuation and expulsion.

By compressing over two million people into less than 30 percent of a shattered, unlivable strip, the conditions necessary for basic survival are systematically being destroyed.

It has been clear that Israel has been attempting to use the cover of diplomacy to achieve what it could not through raw military force alone. The ruins of the enclave stand as a grim ledger of Western-brokered promises, a stark reminder that when the language of peace is divorced from accountability, a ceasefire does not halt the destruction; it merely dictates its pace.