By Aaron Boxerman, Aric Toler, Riley Mellen and Patrick Kingsley

JERUSALEM – The Israeli military has been expanding its presence in the central Gaza Strip in recent months, fortifying military bases and demolishing Palestinian buildings, according to Israeli officials and satellite images, a move that suggests it may be preparing to exert long-term control over the area.

Since the early months of the war in Gaza, Israeli forces have occupied a 4-mile road, known as the Netzarim corridor that bisects the enclave, to keep hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians in Gaza from returning north. That has slowly grown into an 18-square-mile block of territory controlled by Israeli forces, according to the Israeli military and a New York Times analysis of satellite images and video footage.

Over the past three months, soldiers have demolished more than 600 buildings around the road in an apparent attempt to create a buffer zone. They have also rapidly expanded a network of outposts equipped with communications towers and defensive fortifications.

The build-up suggests a shift for Israel, which had largely avoided holding territory in Gaza, creating a vacuum that has allowed Hamas to reassert control in some parts of Gaza. The military said the expansion was for operational reasons.

The expansion has also raised speculation about Israel’s plans for Gaza’s future. Israeli leaders have vowed to maintain security control in Gaza even after the war, without saying clearly what that might entail. Israeli military analysts say the increase in infrastructure along the Netzarim corridor might serve that purpose.

Control of the corridor, which cuts across Gaza from the Israeli border to the Mediterranean Sea, has given Israel the ability to regulate travel across the length of the enclave, keeping hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians in the south. In recent months, the Israeli military has extended its power over territory on either side of the corridor, roughly 4.3 miles wide and 4.3 miles long, to make it easier for Israeli forces to hold onto the area, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesperson, said in an interview.

Israel captured and occupied Gaza in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, maintaining Jewish settlements and military bases there. The country withdrew its troops and settlers in 2005.

Some Israeli ministers have said the military control in Gaza should pave the way for renewed Jewish settlement, although Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has ruled that out for now. The former Israeli settlement of Netzarim — for which the military corridor is named — lies within the area now fully under Israeli control.

The Times analysis of satellite images over the past three months shows that the Israeli military has at least 19 large bases throughout the area and dozens of small ones. While some were built earlier in the war, the imagery also shows that the pace of construction appears to be accelerating: Twelve of the bases were either built or expanded since early September.

Many are paved and walled off, with barracks, access roads and parking for armoured vehicles. They are often surrounded by defensive ditches, mounds and obstacles to obstruct vehicles.

Shoshani said the expanded ground occupation was simply for operational reasons. “Anything that has been built there can be taken down within a day,” he said.

The extent of the fortifications suggests, however, that Israel is at the very least preparing for a protracted battle in Gaza. Avi Dichter, an Israeli government minister, said Israel was “going to stay in Gaza for a long time.”

“We are definitely not at the beginning of the end, because we still have a lot of work to do,” Dichter told reporters in Jerusalem.

Amir Avivi, a retired brigadier general who is regularly briefed by Israel’s security establishment, said many of the country’s military leaders now believed “withdrawing and separation are no longer options.”

“That’s why they’re building all of this,” said Avivi, who leads a forum of hawkish former security officials. “At the end of the day, the facts speak for themselves.”

In November, Netanyahu toured the Netzarim corridor in a relatively rare visit to Gaza. Israeli troops in the area were “doing amazing work,” the prime minister said in a statement. “They have achieved excellent results toward our important objective — Hamas will not rule in Gaza,” he added.

The Biden administration has opposed long-term Israeli control in Gaza, which it hopes will become part of a future Palestinian state. President-elect Donald Trump has called on Israel to “finish up” the war, without stipulating what terms he might deem acceptable for a post-war Gaza.

One of the largest Israeli bases, which is at the intersection of the Netzarim corridor and the main highway running north-south, has steadily expanded through the year. It now contains extensive infrastructure, such as two communications towers and a large checkpoint, according to satellite footage.

Israeli forces levelled at least 620 residential buildings, greenhouses and other structures from Sept. 3 to Nov. 21, according to the Times analysis. Israeli soldiers from the military’s 749th Combat Engineering Battalion posted videos on social media of demolitions they had carried out.

The Times verified 11 of the videos, which are filmed by drones and provide a bird’s-eye view of Israel’s efforts to remake the geography south of Gaza City. They were first published widely by Younis Tirawi, a Palestinian journalist who downloaded them from the soldiers’ social media accounts.

Asked why the military had demolished buildings, Shoshani said at least some had been used by Palestinian militants as lookout posts and hiding places. With much of the area flattened, Hamas fighters would now be less likely to sneak up on Israeli troops patrolling on the Netzarim corridor or on Israeli outposts, Israeli military analysts said.

Israeli soldiers began paving and fortifying the Netzarim corridor late last year, soon after the military’s ground invasion of Gaza began. Israel launched its campaign against Hamas in Gaza after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, in which the Israeli authorities say roughly 1,200 people in Israel were killed and 250 taken hostage. By June, most structures within a half-mile north and south of the road were gone, creating what the Israeli military considered to be a buffer zone.

The Gaza village of Al Mughraqa, nearly 4 miles south of Gaza City, was the hardest hit during that period. More than 10,000 people lived in Al Mughraqa before the war, surrounded by fragrant lemon orchards and tilling fields of tomatoes and cucumbers.

By August, the village was nearly destroyed, along with its vegetation. Only a handful of buildings in the village still stand, according to satellite images and former residents. Israel’s military said Hamas had entrenched itself in the area, necessitating the construction of “defensive infrastructure” to consolidate control.

The village’s Palestinian residents can only dream of returning to their land, said Bashir Abu Kmeil, 50, who fled with his wife and children for southern Gaza earlier in the war.

At first, the village’s Palestinian residents were able to return to check up on their homes and land, Abu Kmeil said. But as the Israeli presence in the area grew more entrenched, they feared that even approaching the rubble would prove to be a death sentence, he said.

Now, “there’s nothing but devastation left,” he said.

-New York Times