For over a year now, the Israeli army has imposed a strict media blockade on the Gaza Strip, which is still off-limits to the international press. News from this besieged enclave is often reduced to a daily litany of killing, destruction and drama that tends to saturate, even overwhelm, even the most well-intentioned reader.

Such saturation is accentuated by the parallel flow of continuous information on the ongoing conflict in Lebanon, as well as on the risks of escalation with Iran. It is all the more important to remember that the Israeli offensive against Gaza, far from being a linear process, has already been marked by three successive wars. It has also recently entered a fourth phase which, concentrated on the northern Gaza Strip, is causing atrocious suffering for the local population.

Benjamin Netanyahu's first war against Gaza was in retaliation for the massacres perpetrated on Israeli territory by Hamas and its allies on October 7, 2023. It consisted of a wave of bombardments of hitherto unprecedented intensity, which continued unabated for some 20 days.

The second war began on the following October 27, with the reoccupation of the Palestinian enclave, soon divided in two by a military axis running from Israeli territory to the Mediterranean. To the north, Gaza City was largely destroyed, along with the towns of Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and Jabaliya, itself flanked by a huge refugee camp. This east-west axis, within which buildings have been methodically demolished, is called the "Netzarim corridor" by the Israeli army, in memory of the religion-based settlement that existed there from 1972 to 2005.

Repeated calls by the Israeli army to evacuate the northern Gaza Strip were heeded by one million people, but another 300,000 to 400,000 continued to live there, primarily because no other area of the Palestinian enclave had escaped Israeli strikes.

The extreme violence of such a reoccupation enabled the Israeli generals to achieve their military objectives in a matter of weeks, with a significant deterioration in Hamas's capabilities. This is why many of them have called for a withdrawal that would consolidate such gains, rather than bog down the Israeli army in a hopeless counter-guerrilla war.

On May 6, 2024, Netanyahu ordered an offensive against Rafah on the Egyptian border, opening the third phase of the war. Until then, Rafah had been the only crossing point with Egypt, but since then no person or product has been able to enter the Gaza Strip without passing through Israeli territory. This widespread vulnerability is even more pronounced in the north of the enclave, where the arrival of aid has been virtually halted since the beginning of this month. A new ultimatum issued by the Israeli army on October 1 was followed by an exodus of some 50,000 residents to the south.

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