Palestinian human rights advocates have warned that Israel’s reported plans to fully reoccupy the Gaza Strip will deepen the humanitarian catastrophe already gripping the territory. Such a move would likely force the displacement of nearly one million people from northern to southern Gaza, worsening shortages of food, water, and medical care in an area already on the brink of collapse.

These measures, condemned as clear violations of international law, risk turning Gaza into an uninhabitable wasteland. The absence of safe corridors, the intensification of bombardments, and the targeting of civilian infrastructure have already left humanitarian agencies struggling to operate. Rights groups say that reoccupation would not only amount to collective punishment, but could also lead to what they describe as one of the gravest crimes against humanity, mass annihilation.

Critics argue that this strategy forms part of Israel’s wider occupation agenda across Palestinian lands, marked by settlement expansion, land confiscation, and systemic violence. They have called for urgent international intervention, warning that the silence of powerful states, especially the United States, whose political and military backing enables these policies, amounts to complicity in the ongoing destruction of Gaza.