Aljazeera Source 31,446 views Apr 6, 2025 #Israel #IsraelGazaWar #GazaCeasefire
While Israel says the creation of the Morag Corridor, which cuts off the southern city of Rafah from the rest of Gaza, is purely operational and meant to constrain Hamas, it’s actually part of a longer-term Israeli strategy to control Gaza from afar, says Robert Geist Pinfold, a lecturer in international security at King’s College London.
“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,” he told Al Jazeera.
“But they also don’t want to rule over Palestinians or be in the heart of those urban Palestinian areas – not out of the goodness of their hearts but because they see this would be a political and security headache,” he added.
“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.”
Al Jazeera’s Rob Geist Pinfold is a lecturer in International Security at King’s College London.
He joins us from London to discuss the latest developments.
