At G7, Egypt’s Sissi urges Israel to abandon plans to expand control of Gaza

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi on Tuesday urged Israel to abandon its plan to take control of 70 percent of Gaza, while witnesses in the Strip said the Israel Defense Forces had pushed forward the Yellow Line that divided the enclave into areas controlled by Hamas and Israel.

Last month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had ordered the IDF to take control of more territory in the Gaza Strip, flouting the terms of a fragile ceasefire that took effect in October.

Under the deal, Israel is supposed to remain in control of just over 50% of the Strip, but Netanyahu said that troops today hold around 60% of the enclave, and are pushing toward 70%.

“Only 30% of the Strip is effectively left for the Palestinian people,” Sissi said at a G7 summit session on Middle East stability in the French resort of Evian.

This approach “must stop immediately,” he added at the session, also attended by G7 and EU leaders, and the leaders of the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

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Sissi said there is “no alternative to reaching a just and lasting settlement to the Palestinian cause based on the two-state solution” and urges “the implementation of US President Donald Trump’s plan for peace in the Gaza Strip.”

Egypt, which shares a border with Gaza, has been a key mediator between Israel and Hamas since the terror group’s October 7, 2023, massacre in southern Israel triggered the war in the enclave.

The first phase of the Gaza truce saw the release of the final remaining hostages seized in the brutal October 7 assault, in exchange for Palestinian security prisoners held by Israel.

The transition to the second phase, which was supposed to involve Hamas’s disarmament and a gradual withdrawal of the IDF, has been stalled for months as Hamas refuses to give up its weapons.

Hamas blames the absence of a full agreement to end the Gaza conflict on what it says is Israel’s refusal to fulfill first-phase obligations agreed to in October, which halted major fighting but did not end Israeli operations. Israel says its strikes are intended to thwart imminent attacks by Hamas and other terror operatives.

On Sunday, Hamas and other factions said they had given a written response to a 15-point blueprint presented to them by the mediators and Trump’s Board of Peace, but did not provide details of their response.

Sources close to the talks said the factions agreed to 14 out of the 15 items. Disagreement remains over the disarmament of Hamas; the terror group links any full disarmament to launching a political track toward a Palestinian state.

Israel insists Hamas must disarm, cede power in Gaza, and play no role in the future of the enclave. Netanyahu and his government have repeatedly insisted that they will not allow the creation of a Palestinian state.

Recently, the US requested that the IDF not go ahead with a fresh operation in the Strip after it became aware of the plans, Channel 13 news reported on Tuesday.

The IDF’s “creeping and silent” expanding control over the Strip in the meantime has gone without public condemnation by mediators because of their frustration with Hamas’s lack of commitment to its obligations to them and Washington, a diplomatic source told Channel 13.

Meanwhile, an Israeli strike on Tuesday killed at least two Palestinians in the central Gaza Strip, health officials said, as residents of an area in the north of the enclave fled their homes after Israeli forces appeared to have expanded their control in the territory.

Medics said an Israeli strike near a residential building in the Nuseirat refugee camp, in the central Gaza Strip, killed two brothers, Ahmed and Mahmoud Abu Heen, without indicating if they were combatants or civilians.

The military did not immediately comment.

Nearly 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since October, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, whose figures have not been verified and do not distinguish between combatants and civilians.

Israel says four of its soldiers have been killed by terrorists in that period.

The Israeli military believes that Hamas’s overall wartime toll of over 73,000 killed is largely accurate, with IDF officials estimating that two to three civilians were killed for every dead terror operative as the IDF battled Hamas forces deeply entrenched in civilian infrastructure like hospitals, schools, and mosques.

The two deaths comes as Nickolay Mladenov, Trump’s Board of Peace envoy for Gaza, arrived in Cairo to pursue talks that mediators from Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey have held with Hamas leaders over implementing the second phase of Trump’s Gaza plan, sources close to the talks said.

Witnesses in southern Gaza have said Israeli forces have, in the past few days, expanded the Yellow Zone — the area controlled by Israel — in eastern Khan Younis and northern Rafah, where new markers and concrete blocks have been placed.

On Sunday, Israeli forces sent tanks further into the Al-Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City in the north, forcing several families to flee. Reuters footage, taken on Monday, showed two yellow blocks used as boundary markers that had been moved closer to houses.

“I swear we don’t know where to go,” said Umm Muhammad Junaynah, a resident of Al-Tuffah, as she struggled to hold back tears. “We are getting our furniture out, we don’t know where to go. We don’t know where to go, we have nowhere to go.”

Nearly the entire Gazan population of 2 million people, most of whom have been displaced several times, now live in a tiny strip of land along the coast, mainly in makeshift tents or damaged buildings, under Hamas control.

The territory has been mostly reduced to ruins by Israel’s two-year military assault that followed the 2023 Hamas massacre on southern Israel.

“It was a night of terror, we were scared,” said Nour Shabat, a 27-year-old woman, referring to events of Sunday night in Al-Tuffah.

“I’m tired of displacement, honestly I’m tired of displacement. What is our fault that this is happening to us?” said Shabat.

“Should I take my belongings, myself and go sleep in the street? I have slept in the streets many times and I have been displaced many times. I’m tired and can’t handle anymore. Enough, I am tired.”