The IDF told CNN it had destroyed part of a “tunnel network” beneath the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, which it claimed was “connecting the north and south of the Gaza Strip.”
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said in February that the IDF’s reported destruction of residential buildings and other civilian structures elsewhere in the Gaza Strip, within a kilometer of the Israel-Gaza fence to create a buffer zone, could amount to a war crime.
Emily Harding, director of the Intelligence, National Security, and Technology Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC, told CNN that the Netzarim Corridor is an attempt “to control population movement.”
Harding said Israel’s biggest challenge since they started the operation in Gaza is to try to root out Hamas militants hiding amongst a civilian population: “The only way you do that is with really good tactical on the ground intelligence, and then preventing them from actually moving around.”
During a Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation from 2000 to 2005, known as the Second Intifada, the so-called “Netzarim junction” was closed off entirely, Jamal Al-Rozzi, a teacher from Gaza City, told CNN.
During this period, Israel tightened its “internal closure” policies, mostly for the security of settlements, according to a 2004 Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, leaving only one route between the northern and southern halves of the Gaza Strip.
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