The Morag corridor divides Gaza's southern parts into two sections. With Saturday's occupation, Israel's military has cut off Rafah from nearby Khan Yunis, according to Israeli media.
Rafah, which had a population of around 200,000 Palestinians before the war, is now completely surrounded by Israeli military. To the south, Israel controls the Philadelphi land corridor, which forms Gaza's border with Egypt.
Robert Geist Pinfold, lecturer in international security at King's College in London, calls it "classic medieval siege warfare".
On the other hand, there has always been a more disturbing strategic logic to this. Israel has always tried to gain control over Gaza, he says to the Qatar-based media company Al Jazeera.
Threatens with more
While Israel has pushed forward to take over the new area, the Palestinian inhabitants have been gradually pushed away. Now, a road is being built along the Morag corridor to further expand Israel's "buffer zone", according to the military (IDF) as reported by The Times of Israel. The idea is for the zone to stretch from the Egyptian border, across Rafah, and all the way to the outskirts of Khan Yunis.
According to Defense Minister Katz, Palestinians are now being forced away from, among other places, Beit Hanun in northern Gaza and around the Netzarim corridor in central Gaza, in order to "expand the security zone".
"Intensive IDF activity will soon be expanded to more places in most of Gaza", he says in a statement.
Realizing Trump's plan
This week, reports emerged that Israel now controls around 50 percent of Gaza. This is happening in the light of increased concerns that Israel's plan is to take over the entire Gaza Strip and completely expel the Palestinian population, in line with US President Donald Trump's talk of turning the area into the "Middle East's Riviera".
Those who want to can "voluntarily move to various countries around the world, in accordance with the US President's vision that we are working to realize", Katz claims on Saturday.
A number of experts have dismissed Trump's Gaza plan and concluded that it would likely involve forced expulsion, which constitutes a war crime.
Israel continues to bomb Gaza from the air. In the past 24 hours, over 20 Palestinians have been killed and more than 60 injured in Israeli attacks, according to health authorities in Hamas-controlled Gaza on Saturday.
