20 October 2025 | 12:23 CAT
4-minute read

Exposing Israel’s Continued Violations and Reconstruction Plans

Gaza’s fragile ceasefire is fraying under repeated attacks and a controversial reconstruction model orchestrated by Israel.

During this week’s Palestine Report, Moulana Ebrahim Moosa explained that the truce is little more than window-dressing for military and territorial expansion.

On Sunday alone, more than 100 air-and-drone strikes rocked the Gaza Strip—from Rafah to Khan Younis and Jabalia—targeting a café, a mobile-phone charging station, a group of journalists and a house sheltering displaced people. According to Gaza’s media office, 97 Palestinians have been killed since the cease-fire took effect on 11 October, and Israeli forces have committed around 50 violations including artillery shelling, drone strikes and tank fire.

There are conflicting reports of two separate incidents in Rafah yesterday, the confusion over the details resulting from an Israeli gag order. The first involved Israeli-contracted private demolitions in Rafah, where a bulldozer struck an old improvised explosive device while continuing to raze Palestinian homes — a process that is part of Israel’s ongoing destruction of evidence and infrastructure despite the truce.

The second incident concerned clashes linked to the Abu Shabab gang, an Israeli-aligned group that Hamas had reportedly infiltrated with double agents. When these agents attempted to confront Abu Shabab gang members, Israeli forces intervened to protect their collaborators, leading to a confrontation.

“This is where there was then a potential confrontation between Hamas members and the Israeli forces. But Hamas did not attack the Israelis directly. This occurred in areas of Palestinian control. And that’s because the Israelis forced their hand,” Moulana Moosa said.

Moulana Moosa said that what began as purported compliance has increasingly resembled a “buffer-zone regime” where residents live in ruins and Israel dictates reconstruction.

Israeli media reports suggest that Israel is consolidating control over a “yellow line” buffer zone near the 1948 borders, withdrawing troops from coastal areas but concentrating forces along this demarcation.

The plan appears to create two distinct zones in Gaza: one densely populated and devastated, where Palestinians will remain confined under the pretext of disarmament, and another, controlled by Israeli-backed gangs such as the Abu Shabab group, marketed internationally as a “rehabilitated” and “de-radicalised” Gaza.

Limited reconstruction will reportedly be permitted in the latter zone for public relations purposes, supported by Emirati funding and Western PR campaigns. Analysts warn that this strategy aims to entrench division, using propaganda to blame Hamas for Gaza’s destruction while allowing Israel to retain military and political dominance.

“It [Israel] will use disarmament as the excuse and pretext to say that the two million Palestinians within this bombed out area, that’s why they are caged and that’s why they are living such a miserable life, because disarmament has not taken place. Whereas in the areas where only Israeli forces and these gangs are, they are going to run propaganda tours and they’re going to show the world that it is allowing reconstruction and it’s only Hamas’s fault why the rest of Gaza is in ruins,” Moulana Moosa said.

He added, “They’ve created some sort of camp area for Abu Shabab, and PR firms in Washington have already been marketing propaganda videos of Al-Shabab as a futuristic vision of a ‘de-radicalised’ Gaza.”

Media reports speak of a “yellow line” and an Israeli minister’s vow to disallow a Palestinian state “between Jordan and the sea,” instead confining the future state-entity within Gaza under Israeli oversight.

Guarantees established by Turkey, Qatar and Egypt as guarantors of the truce are now under serious strain, because their leverage has yet to translate into meaningful pressure on Israel to halt the violations.

Cracks in the global system of multilateral intervention are being revealed: if it cannot protect basic human rights or uphold law when power blinks at coercion and siege, is it not hollow? Mounting evidence indicates that it indeed is: one study estimates up to 8 120 children under 18 may have died during the early months of the war, a six-fold increase in childhood mortality in Gaza.

The scale of devastation is unprecedented: the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics reported 39 384 children in Gaza have lost at least one parent after 534 days of war, with about 17 000 children having lost both parents.

With aid delivery hindered, reconstruction stunted, and continuing violence undermining the cease-fire, Moulana Moosa’s warning of a “theatre of diplomacy” rings ominously true. Unless international actors act with purpose and enforcement replaces press statements, Gaza’s civilians may remain trapped in a deadly grey zone—declared at peace, yet still under siege.

Listen to the Palestine Report on Sabaahul Muslim with Moulana Sulaimaan Ravat.