In May, when Israeli bulldozers began carving a trench through the farmland east of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, Ruwaida Abu Gharaba stopped planting. Within days, the fifty-year-old farmer dismantled the plastic greenhouses she had rebuilt after the October ceasefire, sold what remained of her agricultural equipment, and left for a displacement camp in southern Gaza. The military earthworks were part of an expanding restricted zone marked on Israeli military maps by the Orange Line that has brought nearly two-thirds of Gaza under military control or restriction.
“Leaving the land felt like my soul was leaving my body,” Abu Gharaba says. “I never married and I never had children. The land was my life. I mourned it the way a mother mourns her child.”
Her story is becoming increasingly common across eastern Gaza. Families of farmers who returned after the ceasefire was announced, hoping to rebuild their homes, farms, and businesses, are once again abandoning them as Israeli military operations expand deeper into the coastal enclave.
For residents who returned to Gaza during the ceasefire believing they would be able to rebuild their lives, the maps have become more than military coordinates. They increasingly determine where people can live, move, seek aid, and imagine a future.
The change arrived quietly. In March, aid organizations received updated maps from the Israeli military indicating the new restricted area, which extends beyond the geographic boundaries established in October. Under the ceasefire agreement, Israeli forces were obligated to remain behind the designated Yellow Line, which covered roughly half of the Gaza Strip, while negotiations continued regarding a second phase that was meant to address a broader Israeli withdrawal, reconstruction, and post-war governance. What was presented as a temporary wartime arrangement has for many Palestinians, has become a new geography of control.
About one-fifth of a mile from the new Orange Line, forty-one-year-old Ibrahim Abu Ghaliba still lives on the acre of farmland he has cultivated for years. His home, which sits on the same plot, is only a short distance from the expanding restricted zone, but he has nowhere else to go.
“The farming has stopped completely,” says the father of five. “The land has become too dangerous. Every day there is gunfire. I can see with my own eyes Israeli troops with their tanks and bulldozers digging a trench not far from my house, and there is nothing I can do except watch and try to keep my children safe inside.”
Abu Ghaliba says he sold most of his agricultural equipment and abandoned cultivation altogether, fearing that any attempt to work the land could cost him his life. Yet leaving would be devastating.
“We are preparing ourselves to leave at any moment,” he says. “But we hope it doesn’t happen. This is our home.”
What troubles Abu Ghaliba the most, he says, is his inability to shield his children from the uncertainty. As military activity inches closer, he spends his evenings trying to create moments of normalcy for his five children, the oldest of whom is fifteen.
“Sometimes I feel helpless,” he says. “I cannot find a way to protect them from what is happening around us. The only thing I can do is sit with them at night, talk together, and try to speak about things other than the war.”
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the newly designated Orange Line adds an estimated 11 percent of Gaza’s territory to the military buffer zone. The agency says the shift has further reduced the space available to civilians, placing about 65 percent of Gaza under tighter and more direct Israeli control. Additional shelters and aid facilities, including United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) sites, now fall inside restricted areas. In a May report, UNRWA stated 126 U.N. facilities now fall either within Israel’s militarized zone or inside areas where access requires military approval or coordination.
The expansion of the restricted zone has unfolded as negotiations over the second phase of the ceasefire remain stalled. Many Palestinians say due to destruction throughout the enclave and the extended occupation, the land available to civilians has continued to shrink even during a period when large-scale fighting has eased.
The consequences extend far beyond displacement. Aid groups say the war’s legacy is increasingly etched into Gaza’s agricultural landscape and the systems that sustain civilian life. In an assessment released in May, the nonprofit Anera estimated that nearly two-thirds of cropland in Gaza is inaccessible, largely because it falls within active military zones. The organization found that only 4 percent of the territory’s cropland remains both undamaged and accessible. Much of Gaza’s remaining agricultural capacity now lies either in the restricted zones or on land damaged by more than two years of war. The findings suggest that military boundaries are doing more than restricting movement: They are increasingly determining access to livelihoods, food production, and recovery.
Anera’s assessment points to a broader erosion of civilian life. While people continue to survive, the organization said, “the systems that sustain dignified life, such as food production, water access, healthcare, hygiene, education, and livelihoods, are no longer functioning.” The report adds, ““We are no longer trying to recover. We are trying to prevent complete collapse.”
Even where aid organizations have attempted to support recovery, the gains have often proved fragile. One Gaza-based aid worker involved in agricultural recovery projects, who requested anonymity due to security concerns, says restrictions on imports have fundamentally changed how assistance is delivered to farmers.
“Before the war, we could distribute agricultural inputs directly, including seedlings and other supplies farmers needed,” he says. “Now we are often unable to procure those materials because of shortages in the market and restrictions on imports. Instead, we provide limited cash assistance, and farmers try to find whatever local alternatives are available.”
The shifting boundaries have left many farmers to rely on seedlings produced from locally available seeds that produce lower yields than imported varieties—but farmers still face the same high irrigation costs, Abu Gharaba says.
While some have been able to temporarily resume cultivation, the aid worker says repeated displacement and restrictions continue to undermine recovery efforts.
“Sometimes farmers start producing again—then a new military decision or access restriction comes, and everything collapses once more,” he says.
For Abu Gharaba, those changes are measured less in maps than in personal loss and displacement. Since leaving her land in May, she has been living in a tent, watching from a distance as another landscape she once called home slips beyond reach.
“Every day I risk going to look at my land from just a few meters away, but I don’t dare return,” Abu Gharaba says. “I don’t know whether I’ll ever plant it again. It’s still there, but it feels out of reach. We live in hope and ask the world to help us. We just want to live like normal people and rebuild our lives.”