The mood among the onlookers is cheerful, with children racing around and couples posing for photos. One man is contentedly smoking a joint. In Google reviews, visitors praise the benches and the beautiful view, in addition to the ease of being able to pay by credit card.

Hadar Fenton and her four daughters are standing around the telescope. They cheer whenever there is a loud explosion from a shell detonating in Gaza or a building being blown up. When one detonation sends up a particularly large cloud of smoke, Fenton exults: "How beautiful! How beautiful! How beautiful! Thanks be to God!”

Just a few kilometers across the way are the cities Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, both almost completely destroyed. But Fenton doesn’t see the horrors of war when she gazes across at the other side. She sees the future. A future of Jewish settlements in Gaza.

The Terror Attack as an Opportunity for a Greater Israel

"God promised us the land of Israel, and Gaza is part of it,” says Fenton, 38, the mother of seven children. She is wearing sunglasses and silver earrings, her hair covered by a headscarf in the manner of many devout Jewish women. Her grandfather came to Israel from Yemen many years ago. She lives in the nearby city of Ashkelon and has long dreamed of a home in the Gaza Strip – in an Israeli settlement built on Palestinian land of the kind that existed almost 20 years ago before "disengagement,” as the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip is called.

Now, Fenton believes she isn’t far from achieving that dream. "That’s where we want to live,” she says, pointing towards the ruins of Gaza. The settlement is to be called Yishai: God’s gift.

Shortly after the Hamas terror attack on October 7, 2023, during which around 1,200 people were killed in Israel and more than 250 abducted, at a time when most Israelis were still in a state of shock and funerals were taking place on a daily basis, some saw the massacre as an opportunity. They launched a movement with the goal of once again establishing Jewish settlements in Gaza. Hadar Fenton was among them. October 7, she says, has proven to be a "God-given opportunity to stop the terror and take back the land that belongs to us Jews.”

When asked if she feels any empathy for the people of Gaza, for mothers with children just like herself, she says: "Who stays in a place where so many bombs are falling? They could have fled long ago.” Anyway, she adds, it would have made much more sense for Europe, Canada or Egypt to take in the Palestinians instead of sending aid supplies. "The Arabs would have much better lives elsewhere than they do here.”

An Israeli resettlement of the Gaza Strip seemed like little more than the fantasy of right-wing cranks. Not dissimilar to a government minister’s musings about banishing the Palestinians to the desert or dropping a nuclear weapon on Gaza. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has consistently said that settlements in Gaza are "not realistic.” And: "Israel has no intention of permanently occupying Gaza or displacing its civilian population.”

Now, though, more than one year later, after the majority of the 2.3 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have been displaced numerous times, after a significant portion of the territory has been reduced to rubble, after more than 45,000 deaths, after all the inconceivable things that have happened, the forced displacement of the population, a military occupation and the Israeli resettlement of the Gaza Strip actually does seem realistic. Or, to be more precise: Much of the groundwork has already been laid.

"Conquest, Annexation and Ethnic Cleansing”

DER SPIEGEL spoke with military experts, soldiers, aid workers, pro-settler activists and Palestinians in northern Gaza. What they have to say indicates that the Israeli army is no longer primarily focused on fighting to free the hostages and destroy Hamas. Rather, they say, attention has shifted to occupying Gaza for years, continuing to shrink the area where Palestinians live and permanently displacing those who once lived in northern Gaza. At the same time, preparations have been made that would also allow for the construction of Israeli settlements. That remains true whether or not a temporary ceasefire of the kind currently under negotiation becomes a reality.

"The path we are being led down is one of conquest, annexation and ethnic cleansing,” warned the former Israeli general Moshe Ya’alon in an early December television interview. "There is no Beit Lahiya anymore, no Beit Hanoun, the army is intervening in Jabaliya, and in truth, the land is being cleansed of Arabs.” Israel is threatening to become a "corrupt and leprous fascist messianic state.”

Drastic words, to be sure, but Ya’alon knows what he is talking about – and he is anything but a left-wing peace activist. He was head of the army and also Netanyahu’s defense minister for a time, in office during the 2014 Gaza War, which had been seen as the most brutal and bloodiest conflict prior to October 7, 2023. Around 2,000 Palestinians died in that war.

How could it get to this point? Or, to put it another way, did it have to get to this point?

Far away from Gaza lives an Israeli who is more familiar with this patch of land than many Palestinians. He measures and analyzes warzones and crisis regions with the help of satellite images, data and photos. For to understand how a war is being waged, what strategies are being deployed and which aims are being pursued, Eyal Weizman is convinced it is necessary to examine the spatial changes. That conviction led Weizman, an activist, architect and professor at Goldsmiths College in London, to establish the research agency Forensic Architecture. Since October 7, he and his team have been monitoring how the Israeli army is changing the geography of the Gaza Strip.

As a rule, says Weizman, wartime destruction is random or haphazard. "It should look like a puzzle, with one house destroyed here and another one there. But this destruction has a pattern.” Entire residential quarters have been systematically destroyed, he says, including gardens, fields, wells, roads, wastewater treatment plants, water supply infrastructure and sites of cultural significance. He is convinced he knows what the goal is: "To prevent the return of the Palestinians.” Just like in the late 1940s, when hundreds of thousands were expelled from areas that became Israel, their towns and villages razed to the ground so there would be nothing to return to. Many of them were expelled to the Gaza Strip back then. Refugee camps grew from tent encampments into towns. Today, their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are being expelled again.

To understand what is happening in Gaza, says Weizman, it is necessary to look to the past. "And you have to pay attention to the way history echoes and rhymes.” For him, things are rhyming right now.

Expulsion to the South

In the 19th century, European colonial powers drew the southern border of Palestine along the Wadi Gaza, a riverbed that carries rainwater from the Hebron Mountains to the Mediterranean Sea. In World War I, the Ottomans and the British faced off here. "And since 1948, Israel has tried to expel the Palestinians south of the Wadi Gaza,” says Weizman. "And it’s doing so again now.”

The fact that Wadi Gaza became the historical border also has to do with the climate. South of it, the desert begins. North of it, there is more rainfall, and the land is more fertile. That, says Weizman, is the "geographical meta-story.”

As such, says Weizman, it was no accident that just a few days after October 7, Israel ordered all Gaza Strip residents living north of the Wadi Gaza to relocate to the south, perhaps even hoping that the desperate Palestinians would flee across the border into Egypt. Nor is it an accident, he continues, that one month later, the Israeli army essentially cut the Gaza Strip in half near the Wadi Gaza. Checkpoints were then set up at the interchanges of the two main north-south thoroughfares. Once someone heads south, they are not allowed to return. Since then, most Palestinians have been living in the constantly shrinking southwest corner of the Gaza Strip, many of them in tents and shacks.

Since early October of this year, says Weizman, Israel has been trying to push the remaining Palestinians out of northern Gaza. Once they are gone, he says, the area could then be occupied by the Israeli military, and later, Israeli settlements could even be built there.

Constant Shelling

The result is that right where Hadar Fenton wants to build her home, Mohammed Kilani is currently struggling for survival. The lawyer was born in Beit Lahiya 38 years ago. It is where he grew up, got married and had three daughters. The oldest of them is four and the twins are two-and-a-half. Shortly after the beginning of the war, his home was damaged, and now, he says, it has been completely destroyed. The family has fled from shelter to shelter, a total of eight times by now, he says.

DER SPIEGEL reached Kilani in early December. He only occasionally has internet and he recharges his mobile phone with the help of solar panels. Since the start of the war, he says, they have had hardly any access to food or water, to medicines, diapers and milk for the toddlers. They have had no meat and vegetables and have even had to eat animal feed. But they remained in northern Gaza: After all, he says, it isn’t any safer elsewhere.

Until the end of September, he says, the situation was catastrophic. "But the last two months have been worse than anything that we have experienced in this entire war."

Almost exactly one year after October 7, 2023, the army began sealing off Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahiya and parts of Jabaliya from the rest of the territory. Since then, almost no food, water or fuel has made it into those areas. Thousands have fled, but according to UN estimates, there may still be up to 75,000 people in the north.

Northern Gaza Is Nothing but Rubble

Kilani says they are fired on day and night by warplanes, drones and artillery. "There are arrests, searches, shelters are being burned down. We have no food or water anymore. Those who go out onto the street are shot at. Bulldozers have torn up the land and destroyed homes.” He no longer recognizes Beit Lahiya, he says, the place he has spent his entire life. "The only thing you see is rubble.”

The lawyer tells the story of a building being shelled in Beit Lahiya in late November where dozens of civilians were taking shelter. Kilani says he dug for survivors with his own hands, but he and the other helpers were fired on by the Israelis. After quite some time, he says, they were able to pull an injured woman out of the debris. But as she was being taken away in a donkey cart, the army fired at them, he says, adding that the woman, her son and others were killed in the attack. He says he watched the incident from a distance. "I will never forget those images.” He sends photos showing the cart, a donkey with a mangled head and three dead people wrapped in colorful blankets. Next to them lies a severed arm.

Similar bombardments have been reported from northern Gaza almost daily since the beginning of the current operation. According to the Palestinian Civil Defense, some 2,700 people in the area have been killed since the beginning of October alone, with an additional 10,000 injuries.

Eaten by Dogs

The wounded can hardly be treated, with the only half-way operational hospital in northern Gaza having been frequently attacked by the army and searched. Medical personnel and patients alike have been arrested and expelled. Many of the dead have to be buried where they lie, says Kilani, without a shroud or a grave marker. If they are buried at all. There are a number of bodies lying beneath the rubble, he says, and they are often eaten by dogs.

Kilani and several other Palestinians DER SPIEGEL spoke with are convinced that the army is intentionally targeting residential buildings to force residents to leave northern Gaza. And that they also don’t shy away from attacking shelters.

Repeated Attacks on Schools

The Abu Tamam School was one of the last emergency shelters in Beit Lahiya to which Kilani and his family fled. Several thousand people are thought to have been sheltering there.

Then, says Kilani, leaflets were dropped on December 4 calling on residents to evacuate. A short time later, bombs began falling near the school, injuring at least 50 people, the lawyer says. Afterwards, quadcopters – small, often-armed drones flown by the Israeli army – again called on the people in the school to evacuate via loudspeaker, threatening shelling and firing at people in the nearby streets. Panic broke out in the school, says Kilani. "It was like Judgment Day.”

Kilani decided to send his family to Gaza City. He stayed, however, out of fear that he might be arrested or mistreated at the Israeli checkpoint that all displaced people must pass. Since the beginning of the war, Israel has arrested what could amount to many thousands of men in the Gaza Strip, with some of them being locked in camps and tortured. Kilani says that he now sleeps in schools or in empty homes – or sometimes on the street.

"What’s happening here is more than just ethnic cleansing,” says the lawyer. "There are no words to describe what is being done to us. They are killing and expelling us, and they are starving us out at the same time.”

Displaced Gazans looking for shelter weren’t just driven out of the Abu Tamam School on December 4, but also from two other schools in Beit Lahiya. The UN says that up to 5,500 people were forced to flee to Gaza City that day. Among those displaced from the Abu Tamam School was Mohamed Masri, 36, who was a university lecturer before the war, along with his wife and two children.

As ordered by the military, Masri says, the family walked the hour-and-a-half to the Israeli checkpoint. With them were old men and women who could hardly walk, he says, in addition to people in wheelchairs who made little progress down the bombed-out roads. Beit Lahiya, he says, was unrecognizable – "as if it had been hit by a powerful earthquake.”

A Long March in Fear

They had to wait for several hours at the checkpoint until darkness fell, says Masri. "Young men no older than 20 and armed to the teeth” kept watch, insulting them and treating them like animals, he says. All of the men were separated from their families, with the women and children left to undertake the several-kilometer march to Gaza City on their own. A 70-year-old woman told DER SPIEGEL that she, like so many others, had to leave behind much of her luggage because she could no longer carry it. Furthermore, soldiers were firing over their heads, she says, to scare them and keep them moving. According to claims on social media, some people were even killed, but there is no proof.

The men, says the university lecturer Masri, were forced to wait before then being photographed in groups of five with cameras apparently connected to facial recognition software. They were also questioned. Those deemed suspicious, says Masri, were led away to the "barracks.”

"We could hear the men screaming, they were abused so badly,” says Masri. Those who refused to go to the barracks were beaten. He, himself, was finally allowed to pass the checkpoint after 10 hours, escorted by soldiers. If someone in his group fell down, he says, they were kicked, and Masri was hit in the head by a soldier with the butt of his rifle. Then, he says, soldiers shot at them from a distance of 10 meters, injuring some of the men.

He finally arrived in Gaza City in the middle of the night, where he slept on the street before finding his family the next morning. "We are now living outdoors,” he said in early December. "There are hardly any shelters or tents available. Children are wailing from hunger and cold.” They were only able to find a tent a few days later.

Memories of the Nakba

Hamdiya and her stepmother Jamila Abou Ouda also found refuge in Gaza City, in an overcrowded school. Hamdiya washes her stepmother’s wounds with saltwater and changes her diapers as best she can. They once all lived together – with children and grandchildren – in a five-story house of 320 square kilometers in Beit Hanoun that was only finished in 2015. It was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. Hamdiya Abou Ouda’s voice cracks repeatedly as she speaks of her rooftop garden, of the roses, the garlic and the eggplants she grew there. She even kept pigeons and rabbits on the roof.

They both now fear that they will never again be able to return home, that they are witnessing a reprise of the Nakba, as the Palestinians call the expulsions of 1948. Jamila Abou Ouda because she experienced the Nakba firsthand – and Hamdiya Abou Ouda because she grew up hearing stories about the Nakba.

Jamila Abou Ouda is 95 years old, has only one eye and is hard of hearing. But her memory is clear. "I was a young girl at the time,” she says, "but I can say that it wasn’t as bad as it is now. I have never experienced such a destructive war.” The Israelis were "more merciful” back then, she says. "They gave us food.” Hamdiya Abou Ouda is afraid that her fate will now be that of her stepmother. "I no longer have the strength to start again from the beginning. That would be the end of my life.”

Not all of the details related by the Palestinians with whom DER SPIEGEL spoke could be confirmed, but their stories are consistent with those told by other Palestinians in Gaza and the accounts from international aid workers.

In comments provided to DER SPIEGEL, the Israeli army justified its approach in northern Gaza by saying its focus is on "terrorists and terrorist infrastructure.” The military, the statement said, "attacks exclusively military targets” and called on the civilian population to evacuate for their own protection. Possible misconduct during arrests and interrogations will be investigated, the army said, and disciplinary measures will be taken if necessary.

The Desperate Warnings of Aid Workers

British national Louise Wateridge, a spokesperson for the UNRWA, the UN aid organization for the Palestinians, was in Gaza City for a week in late November. She says she met with a number of people there who had recently been displaced from the north. All of them, she says, "had only the clothes on their backs.” Some had freed themselves from their bombed-out homes. "They had lost close family members and started crying when they talked about it.”

Many women arrived alone she says, adding that some of their husbands, fathers and brothers had been shot by Israeli soldiers or arrested at checkpoints. Every day, says Wateridge, the women would wait on Salah al-Din Road, the main path of escape from the north, for their men to appear.

The humanitarian situation in Gaza City is also catastrophic, she says. The city is destroyed and there is no room left for people from the north. "They are camping everywhere, many in the ruins of bombed-out buildings that look like they could collapse at any minute,” Wateridge reports. It stinks of wastewater, most of the Palestinians are hungry and the shelling continues, she says. "It is driving the people to desperation.”

The UN and numerous other aid organizations have issued increasingly drastic warnings in recent weeks of the "apocalyptic” situation in northern Gaza. Even the president of the traditionally extremely reserved International Committee of the Red Cross, Mirjana Spoljaric, told DER SPIEGEL in mid-November: "I am at a loss for words to describe what is happening in Gaza. There is no human dignity left in Gaza.”

But there have been almost no reactions to the warnings. Perhaps because the world, after more than a year of war, has grown used to the carnage. Because the horror has become almost normal. Yet what is currently taking place in northern Gaza is not simply a continuation of the war. Rather, it is apparently the precursor to a long-term land grab.

Military Occupation of a Third of Gaza

According to the UN, almost 70 percent of all buildings in the Gaza Strip had been destroyed or damaged by late November. A DER SPIEGEL analysis of satellite imagery found that between October 11 and November 12 alone, at least 100 buildings – some of them multistory residential structures – were destroyed in the Jabaliya camp, all of them within an area the size of 20 soccer fields.

Most of them were very likely targeted for demolition by the army. In Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya, there seem to have been similarly targeted demolitions in the last two months. Several Palestinians have told DER SPIEGEL that they were carried out by unmanned armored vehicles. They call them "robot bombs.”

The most widespread destruction since the beginning of the war can be found along the border to Israel, where the army has established a kind of "buffer zone” by demolishing all structures within a kilometer. In the area adjoining the border of Egypt, called the Philadelphi Corridor, buildings have also been systematically destroyed. Furthermore, Forensic Architecture has identified 14 Israeli army raid routes that cut into the Gaza Strip. They, too, are flanked by areas of extreme destruction.

But the widest swath of destruction is within the military zone – up to seven kilometers wide – that divides the Gaza Strip into two halves. It alone makes up roughly 10 percent of the area of the coastal strip, and almost all buildings and farmland in the zone have been destroyed. It is called the Netzarim Corridor, named after the Israeli settlement here that was cleared in 2005.

But the Israeli army isn’t just focused on destruction. It is building things too. According to reporting by the New York Times, relying on satellite images, fully 19 military bases and facilities have been built within the Netzarim Corridor in recent months. The positions are protected by earthen barriers several meters high. They are equipped with numerous radio towers, a synagogue, container barracks, showers and toilets – and even, it has been reported, a barbecue pit for the soldiers. The internet is so good that soldiers can stream films in their free time.

One reservist who was deployed in Gaza and who now serves in a command center, told DER SPIEGEL that there are currently hardly any large operations underway against Hamas. "The aim is to conquer as much land as possible at all costs so that we can use it after the war.” The ultimate goal, he said, is to take control of the northern Gaza Strip and reduce the rest of the territory.

In total, the army has de facto occupied a third of the Gaza Strip and transformed it into a military exclusion zone, says Weizman, the founder of Forensic Architecture. "In the last 14 months,” he says, "Israel has prepared everything for long-term military control of the Gaza Strip.”

Settlers Want the War to Continue

It has also been made possible by the fact that the right-wing extremists in the Israeli government have been standing in the way of a hostage deal for months, which would involve a long-term ceasefire and complete troop withdrawal. And for as long as the military remains in the Gaza Strip, it continues expanding its footprint. For that reason, the extremists from the settler movement want this war to continue for as long as possible. Because only if the army remains in the Gaza strip will they be able to achieve their goal of driving out the Palestinians and building settlements.

They could, however, be able to support a limited hostage deal of the kind currently under discussion. That deal does not envision a complete Israeli withdrawal and would involve a ceasefire of only a few weeks, not all hostages would be released. The war would not be over.

Back in January, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a leading settler activist, said: "There will be a military government in Gaza.” Defense Minister Israel Katz recently announced that Israel "will maintain security control over Gaza,” similar to the situation in the West Bank.

Smotrich and other members of government have been demanding for months that responsibility for the provision of relief goods to Gaza be taken from the UN and handed to private companies escorted by the Israeli army. Ex-defense minister Yoav Gallant, who was fired by Netanyahu in early November, called the scheme a "euphemism for the start of a military government.” Netanyahu’s government is nevertheless looking into the idea. And is concurrently blocking the work of the UN wherever it can. The amount of aid deliveries reaching the Gaza Strip is currently at its lowest level since the beginning of the war.

The West Bank Model

"We can never predict the future, but if Israel wants to build settlements in Gaza, everything is ready,” says Weizman. The infrastructure that has been erected in the warzone is "dual use,” meaning it can be used for both military and civilian purposes, he says. And that ambiguity is intentional, he adds. It allows for the official denial of settlement projects even after they have long since begun.

Things will develop in a similar fashion to the situation in the West Bank, predicts Weizman, who also critically studies settlement construction there. Settlers will slowly infiltrate, either into the Netzarim Corridor or the northern part of Gaza, he believes, initially only remaining during the day before then beginning to spend the night on military bases. Later, he says, they will put up tents or containers, then a fence here and a road there. It might be many years before they receive retroactive authorization, transforming an outpost into a settlement. More than half a million Israelis now life in the West Bank, with another 200,000 in East Jerusalem.

Daniella Weiss, a 79-year-old pro-settlement activist from the West Bank, is one of those responsible for the development. For more than half a century, she has been successfully working to realize her vision of a Greater Israel. Now, the Gaza Strip is to follow. Immediately after October 7, she began collecting donations for future settlements, even traveling as far away as Brazil for the purpose. She says she has used the money to buy 40 container housing units, cranes, generators and much more. And she has recruited new settlers for Gaza. She claims that 750 families have already signed up.

Weiss is now looking for a site near Gaza to temporarily store the containers so she can, when an opportunity presents itself, take them into Gaza overnight. Once they are there, Weiss told the Israeli public broadcaster Kan, the settlers won’t be easy to remove. She has even been inside the Gaza Strip to look around, a trip made possible with the help of soldiers. "Within a year, we will be living in Gaza,” she says triumphantly at every opportunity.

Settlements in Gaza as a Political Option

Hadar Fenton wants to be among the first settlers in Gaza. She registered with Weiss’ organization just a few weeks after October 7. In January, she attended the large settler conference in Jerusalem, she says, during which 11 active government ministers called for a return to Gaza. The atmosphere among the thousands of conference attendees was fantastic, says Fenton. "I understood how many of us there are and that we must now be taking concrete steps.”

Because the right-wing extremists have never concealed their ultimate goals, the debate surrounding the resettlement of Gaza has normalized in recent months. Depopulating parts of the Gaza Strip so that Jews can settle there – that is now a political option in Israel. The pro-settlement activists argue they have to take the land as a form of revenge and that settlements will provide added security. Only around 20 percent of Israelis are in favor of such a development, but there is hardly any resistance from those in government. After all, even Netanyahu’s Likud party is now dominated by settlers and their supporters.