The Israeli military announced that that it has now completed the construction of the Morag Corridor, which cuts off the southern city of Rafah from the rest of Gaza.
As such, the Israeli army has completely encircled Rafah in southern Gaza, with the 36th Division holding the Morag Corridor, and the Gaza Division operating in the Philadelphi Corridor, the Egypt-Gaza border area.
The 36th Division’s 188th Armored Brigade had pushed into the Morag Corridor from the northwest, while the division’s Golani Infantry Brigade entered from the border in the southeast. Overnight, the two units joined up.
Engineering forces are now constructing a road along the corridor, similar to the other corridors in Gaza captured by the IDF during the war.
The military will now operate inside areas of Rafah that it has not been in yet to defeat the remaining Hamas forces there. The IDF issued evacuation warnings for civilians in Rafah nearly two weeks ago.
Over the past week and a half, during operations in the Morag Corridor area, the IDF says it has eliminated dozens of terror operatives and destroyed Hamas infrastructure, including tunnels.
Israel Katz, Israel’s Defence Minister, stated that the army’s move effectively turns Rafah into an “Israeli security zone.”
In a statement, Katz threatened Palestinians in Gaza, saying, “This is the last chance to banish Hamas and release all hostages, stopping the war.”
He added that if they do not do as he says, Israeli operations will spread to “most of Gaza’s territory.”
Katz also said that the Netzarim Corridor, a route that divides the Strip in two, will also be expanded.
Israel withdrew from the Netzarim Corridor briefly during the ceasefire earlier this year, only to seize it again when it resumed hostilities.
He said that “willful passage” will be granted for Palestinians who wish to flee Gaza, mentioning again US President Trump’s plan to remove Palestinians from Gaza.
On X, the Israeli army’s Arabic language spokesperson ordered residents in many neighbourhoods in Khan Younis to leave, warning of an imminent attack “with great force.”
The spokesperson ordered “all residents of the Gaza Strip who are present in the areas of Khan Younis and in the neighborhoods: Qizan al-Najjar, Qizan Abu Rashwan, al-Salam, al-Manara, al-Qurain, Maan, al-Batn al-Sameen, Jurt al-Lot, al-Fakhari and the southern neighborhoods of Bani Suhaila”, to leave their homes in advance of the attack and proceed to al-Mawasi, west of the city on Gaza’s sea coast.
The spokesperson claimed that Hamas fired rockets at Israel from this area.
Earlier, the Israeli army said that three rockets fired from the Gaza Strip were intercepted without causing casualties.
Morag Corridor Part Of Israeli Strategy To Control Gaza
Robert Geist Pinfold, a lecturer in international security at King’s College London, opined that while Israel says the creation of the Morag Corridor is purely operational and meant to constrain Hamas, it’s actually part of an Israeli strategy to control Gaza from afar.
“On the one hand, it’s classic medieval siege warfare in 2025. On the other hand, I think there’s a more worrying long-term strategic logic to this. Israel has always sought to control the Gaza Strip, particularly to oversee what comes in and what comes out and ‘security’ over the territories, as Israel would call it.
“These [Morag, Netzarim and Philadelphi] corridors are named after settlements, and the settlements did not appear there randomly. They were put there for this specific purpose: to cut off Gaza’s urban areas and give Israel the ability to squeeze the territory when and if it desires.”
Robert Geist Pinfold
Due to recent developments, the Israeli army’s buffer zone in southern Gaza will stretch from the Egyptian border to the outskirts of Khan Younis — more than 5 kilometers away — and include the entire city of Rafah within it — around 20% of the Strip.
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