Israel builds giant barrier inside Gaza, fueling border fears
Satellite images show an earthen barrier more than 23 km long inside Gaza, as Israel extends the yellow line beyond the October 2025 ceasefire map.
New satellite imagery reviewed by the Associated Press and BBC Verify showed the Israeli military building a giant earthen barrier inside Gaza along the yellow line, the post-ceasefire line of control. The structure appears to divide the more than 50% of the Gaza Strip that Israel controls from the rest of the territory, turning a military boundary into a fixed physical line.
The barrier stretches for more than 23 kilometers, and construction on that stretch began in February 2026 before appearing to push farther south. BBC Verify also found that Israel had moved the blocks meant to mark the line deeper into Gaza in several places, creating confusion among Palestinians and extending control beyond the boundaries laid out in the October 2025 peace plan.
Al Jazeera said the earthworks have fueled Palestinian fears that most of Gaza will never be relinquished by Israel. One source in the search results said the barrier could permanently displace thousands of civilians and severely damage Gaza’s already limited agricultural sector, where access to fields and roads has become one of the central questions of survival.
The changes fit a longer pattern of physical alteration on the ground. In November 2024, BBC News described Israel creating a new military dividing line in north Gaza after troops cleared an area across the width of the strip and demolished hundreds of buildings between the Mediterranean Sea and the Israel border. BBC reporting has since said Israel demolished thousands of buildings across Gaza after withdrawing from a ceasefire with Hamas in March 2026.
B’Tselem’s report, No Place Under Heaven: Forced displacement in the Gaza Strip, 2023-2025, captured the scale of displacement already reshaping the enclave. With the Rafah crossing as Gaza’s only border point with a country other than Israel, the internal line now being hardened inside the strip affects not only movement, but also access to land, homes and the ties that keep neighborhoods connected.
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