Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Israel is establishing a new security corridor across the Gaza Strip to pressure Hamas, suggesting it would cut off the southern city of Rafah, which Israel has ordered evacuated, from the rest of the Palestinian territory.
The announcement came after Netanyahu's defense minister said that Israel would seize large areas of Gaza and add them to its so-called security zones. A wave of Israeli strikes, meanwhile, killed more than 40 Palestinians, including several women and children, according to Palestinian health officials.
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Israel has vowed to escalate the nearly 18-month war with Hamas until the militant group returns dozens of remaining hostages, disarms and leaves the territory. Israel ended a ceasefire in March and has imposed a monthlong halt on all imports of food, fuel and humanitarian aid.
Netanyahu described the new axis as the Morag corridor, using the name of a Jewish settlement that once stood between Rafah and Khan Younis, suggesting it would run between the two southern cities. He said it would be "a second Philadelphi corridor " referring to the Gaza side of the border with Egypt further south, which has been under Israeli control since last May.
Israel has reasserted control over the Netzarim corridor, also named for a former settlement, that cuts off the northern third of Gaza, including Gaza City, from the rest of the narrow coastal strip. Both of the existing corridors run from the Israeli border to the Mediterranean Sea.
“We are cutting up the strip, and we are increasing the pressure step by step, so that they will give us our hostages,” Netanyahu said.
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In northern Gaza, an Israeli airstrike hit a U.N. building in the built-up Jabaliya refugee camp, killing 15 people, including nine children and two women, according to the Indonesian Hospital. The Israeli military said it struck Hamas militants in a command and control center.
The building, previously a clinic, had been converted into a shelter for displaced people, with more than 700 residing there, according to Juliette Touma, a spokesperson for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, the main aid provider in Gaza. No U.N. staff were wounded in the strike.
She said U.N. staff warned people about the dangers of remaining there after Wednesday's strike but that many chose to stay, “simply because they have absolutely nowhere else to go.”
