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The Yellow Line Will Remain a De Facto Border in Gaza for the Foreseeable Future
(Times of Israel) Stav Levaton - Four months after the Gaza ceasefire took effect, the enclave remains divided in half, with Israeli forces and Hamas fighters separated by the Yellow Line. President Trump's 20-point peace framework presented the line as a provisional security boundary, pending a phased Israeli withdrawal once specific conditions were met including the disarmament of Hamas. Even in a full withdrawal scenario, Israel would still retain a 1 km.-wide buffer zone along Gaza's perimeter, including the Philadelphi Route on the Egyptian border, which has long served as a major smuggling corridor. Hillel Frisch, professor emeritus at Bar-Ilan University and former senior researcher at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, said the central challenge moving forward is "how to get rid of Hamas." Contrary to the U.S. push for a multinational force to ensure Hamas's disarmament, he argued that the IDF is the only actor capable of carrying out that mission. Look at "the 12,000-man UN force...in Lebanon since 2006...[that] did nothing. Forty-six countries [contributed to UNIFIL], and it didn't prevent the movement of one single Hizbullah terrorist." With no realistic prospect for removing Hamas from power to Israel's satisfaction, Frisch predicted that the Yellow Line would remain a de facto border in Gaza for the foreseeable future.