What Is Israel's 'Green Rafah' Project — and Why Are People Worried It Could Split Gaza Apart?
Israel has approved the start of infrastructure work in an area of eastern Rafah, a city in the southern Gaza Strip. The project is called "Green Rafah," and experts warn it could permanently divide Gaza into small, separated zones where each area is controlled on its own. The project is backed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz. The Israeli Prime Minister's Office described it as a pilot program supported by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a small but wealthy Gulf country. The goal, Israel says, is to build temporary housing in an area free of Hamas's influence, according to Al Jazeera.
The Israeli military will oversee the installation of water, sewage, and electrical systems for the Green Rafah area. Palestinian workers chosen for the job face intense security screenings by the Shin Bet, Israel's domestic intelligence agency. Israeli authorities have also banned the entry of mobile homes, or "caravans," into the Green Rafah area until at least November.
A ceasefire is an agreement to stop fighting. Last year, Israel and other parties signed a ceasefire deal in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. That deal included a humanitarian protocol, a set of rules requiring the entry of temporary housing and the repair of civilian infrastructure in Gaza. According to Palestinian researcher Mohammad Hamed al-Aila, the ban on caravans goes against that protocol. Al-Aila notes that ten months have passed since the ceasefire deal was signed and Israel has not met its humanitarian obligations. He says Israel is using the humanitarian situation in Gaza as a tool of political pressure.
On the same day Israel approved Green Rafah, Netanyahu publicly rejected a 15-point plan for Gaza announced by the United States-led Board of Peace. That plan calls for Hamas to give up its weapons in stages and for Israeli forces to leave the Strip in phases. Netanyahu's position is that an Israeli withdrawal will not happen until Hamas is fully disarmed. In other words, he is making disarmament a precondition for any withdrawal. That approach undermines the step-by-step logic the Board of Peace's plan appears to depend on.
The Board of Peace had planned to launch a pilot Gaza housing project and believes it can set up a humanitarian zone in the Rafah area whether or not Hamas agrees to disarm. But it acknowledges it needs cooperation from other parties, according to The Times of Israel. Green Rafah appears to be that pilot, or at least a parallel Israeli effort doing something similar.
The broader context here stretches back months and reveals a steady trend toward splitting Gaza into separate parts. In November 2025, The Guardian reported that the US military was planning for a divided Gaza. One part, a "green zone," would get reconstruction. Another part, a "red zone," would have almost all Palestinians removed and no reconstruction planned. Around the same time, Reuters reported that a split between an Israeli-controlled area and a Hamas-ruled area was increasingly likely. By January 2026, the BBC reported that the Trump administration had unveiled plans for a "New Gaza" with skyscrapers, with President Trump declaring, "We're going to be very successful in Gaza." France 24 reported Israeli plans to move Palestinian civilians to a new "humanitarian city" built on the ruins of Rafah. In February 2026, Reuters reported that the UAE had drafted plans to build a compound to house thousands of displaced Palestinians in a part of south Gaza under Israeli control. Reuters also reported that the second phase of Trump's Gaza plan envisions Hamas giving up its weapons and Gaza being demilitarized in exchange for a full Israeli withdrawal.
Palestinian political researcher Ahmed al-Atawneh argues that projects such as Green Rafah are designed to create isolated pockets under total Israeli control. Think of Gaza being divided into separate, walled-off neighborhoods where each one depends on Israel for basic services and security. He says Israel's strategy relies on removing the political dimension from the Palestinian struggle. He also criticizes Arab countries for taking part in such frameworks without a unified Palestinian agreement. His critique points to a central tension: the UAE's backing for Green Rafah makes a Gulf state a partner in an Israeli-run reconstruction process that skips any Palestinian political consensus. At the same time, the US-led Board of Peace's 15-point plan demands that Hamas disarm before Israel withdraws.
These overlapping plans carry several contradictions. Netanyahu's rejection of the Board of Peace plan on the same day he approved Green Rafah suggests Israel is picking and choosing which parts of the international framework to engage with. It is taking the parts that involve infrastructure under Israeli security supervision and discarding the parts that set a timeline for withdrawal. The caravans ban through November also narrows what "temporary housing" actually means in practice. Infrastructure may go into the ground, but real shelter for displaced Palestinians depends on Israeli approval that has been pushed off. Whether the Board of Peace can keep its humanitarian-zone concept going without Israeli support for the full 15-point plan, or whether Green Rafah simply becomes the Israeli-controlled version of a divided Gaza that the US military began planning for months earlier, will likely shape the next phase of what happens on the ground after the war.
