Nov. 22, 2025 - Since the ceasefire was announced on October 10, the division of Gaza into a so-called “green zone” under Israeli army control and a so-called “red zone”, where Palestinians have been displaced and contained, has solidified. Separating the two is the invisible “yellow line”.
The administration of United States President Donald Trump has signalled that reconstruction will be limited to the “green zone” where Israel and its allies have been working on plans for so-called “alternative safe communities”.
Although there are reports last week that these plans were dropped, colleagues in the humanitarian field have informed me that the first such community is still slated to be built in Rafah, southern Gaza and a further 10 are planned along the yellow line and into the north.
If plans for these “safe communities” proceed, they would cement a deadly fragmentation of Gaza. The purpose of creating these camps is not to provide humanitarian relief but to create zones of managed dispossession where Palestinians would be screened and vetted to enter in order to receive basic services, but would be explicitly barred from returning to the off-limits and blockaded “red zone”.
These plans represent a recycled version of what Israel has long wanted to do in Gaza. The creation of “bubbles” – an initial, telling euphemism that I first heard proposed by the Israeli authorities when I was part of coordinating humanitarian operations in Palestine as a United Nations official – was the first iteration of areas where Palestinians would be screened and would be conditioned to receive controlled assistance.
This is the grim reality of the so-called ceasefire deal in Gaza. It will not deliver peace; it will further shatter Gaza and the prospect for Palestinian sovereignty into pieces. If anything, it is a Gaza piece plan.
On Monday this week, the United Nations Security Council voted to legitimise the plan by endorsing a board of peace to manage Gaza and an international stabilisation force (ISF) to provide security. But what areas will these forces secure? There is no agreed-upon peace for these forces to keep. According to maps I have seen of the “alternative safe communities”, the ISF would be positioned along the yellow line and would secure these newly established camps.
Hamas has unsurprisingly rejected the UNSC resolution. It was obvious that its provisions were not the outcome of a negotiated agreement. In the 20-point Trump plan, which was attached as an annex to the resolution, point 17 may now be invoked: “in the event Hamas delays or rejects this proposal, the above, including the scaled-up aid operations, will proceed in the terror-free areas handed over from the IDF [Israeli army] to the ISF”. In this way, the “alternative safe communities” may become the only enabled aid delivery centres, thereby prolonging the total blockade on Palestinians in Gaza.
The deadly logic of evacuation orders that marked the past two years and which drove Palestinians out of their homes, is now being extended into the UNSC-endorsed plan. Those who remain outside of the alternative communities, in the “red zone”, risk being labelled “Hamas supporters” and therefore ineligible for protection under Israel’s warped interpretation of international law and subject to ongoing military operations, as already seen in past days.
The fate of Palestinians in the “red zone” remains conspicuously absent from official planning. In fact, humanitarian organisations capable of saving lives are being squeezed out by an Israeli registration process designed to stifle criticism and vet staff for compliance.
The model of contained communities is not entirely new. The British created “new villages” in Malaya in the 1950s, the Americans created “strategic hamlets” in Vietnam in the 1960s, and the colonial authorities in Rhodesia (today’s Zimbabwe) created “protected villages” in the 1970s during so-called “counter-insurgency”.
Civilian populations were coerced and forced into camps where they were screened in return for aid. The plan was to diminish popular support for resistance groups who were fighting colonial rule. It failed.
In South Africa, the apartheid government created bantustans, pseudo-independent homelands designed to concentrate and control the Black population. They also failed to prevent the collapse of a settler-colonial apartheid regime.
In Gaza, the peace plan that has been imposed rather than negotiated will leave Israel’s occupation not only intact but emboldened. The UNSC has endorsed something that goes against the rulings of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the occupied Palestinian territory, essentially whitewashing a genocidal crime scene and creating a monument to impunity.
All of this unfolds during a so-called ceasefire, in which Palestinians continue to be killed for crossing invisible lines drawn by an illegal occupation.
The world might hail this phase as an end to the war, and states reluctant to sanction Israel are undoubtedly relieved to revive trade and reduce public scrutiny.
Moving beyond this dangerous status quo will require the very accountability the US and Israel have worked hard to avoid: implementing the rulings of the ICJ. While Western powers hollow out these institutions, new political coalitions are needed to demand the equal application of international law. At its most basic level, this requires the unhindered delivery of humanitarian aid to Palestinians wherever they are in the strip and Palestinian-led reconstruction that ensures Palestinians are not perpetually condemned to bare survival.
The precedent set in Gaza would not be contained within the fences of Gaza’s gated communities sealed by international forces: it would further erode the foundations of a so-called rules-based order. The only way forward is a return to the principle this entire process has so far ignored: the inalienable right of a people to determine their own future.
