Gaza risks becoming permanently divided, top official warns
By Tal Shalev, CNN
Jerusalem (CNN) — A prolonged stalemate in Gaza risks cementing the territory’s permanent division, a top international official overseeing the ceasefire has warned, as Israel deepens its control over the enclave.
Nikolay Mladenov, the official in charge of implementing the US-brokered ceasefire deal in Gaza, said failure to advance the agreement would lead to “a dangerous status quo” that would leave two million Palestinians in Gaza without a viable future while entrenching Israel’s long-term presence across more than half of the shattered territory.
“A status quo should not be an option to anyone,” said Mladenov, who serves as the director-general of the Gaza Board of Peace (BoP), at a press briefing in Jerusalem on Wednesday, his first since taking office in January. “The longer we don’t address the future, the more we stabilize the status quo, and that status quo becomes more difficult to remove,” Mladenov said after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The warning underscores the deteriorating situation in Gaza. With the world’s attention fixed on the war in Iran, Israel is expanding its control over the enclave and killing hundreds more Palestinians while Hamas refuses to disarm as required by the ceasefire agreement. Israeli officials warn that Hamas is actively rebuilding its military and civilian capabilities and tightening its control over Gaza.
Under the October 2025 ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, Israeli forces withdrew to a demarcation line known as the “yellow line” which encompassed roughly 53% of Gaza. But the line is shifting towards the Mediterranean Sea, cramming Gaza’s population into a shrinking strip of land. International aid groups say the Israeli military provided them last month with a new map marking an “orange line,” which shows Israel now controlling about 64% of the territory.
CNN has reached out to the Israeli military for comment.
‘Gaza is gone’
Mladenov declined to address the new line, instead warning about prospects of the yellow line solidifying “into a fence or wall, a permanent separation in Gaza.”
“And at that point, it doesn’t really matter where the yellow line is, but Gaza is gone,” he added, warning that this would not serve the security demands of Israel either because “Hamas will rearm and threaten again.”
Seven months after the ceasefire went into effect, Mladenov acknowledged the truce is “far from perfect,” but noted that it has brought “relative stability.”
According to Mladenov, the BoP and international mediators – the US, Egypt, Qatar and Turkey – continue to monitor the violations of the truce and work to reduce them. “There are a lot of things happening on the ground – air strikes or other military movements on the ground constitute violations of the ceasefire,” he said.
Israel has carried out near-daily airstrikes in Gaza, killing more than 850 people since the ceasefire went into effect, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. In practice, Mladenov said this means that “civilians are still being killed, families live in fear, and for Palestinians in Gaza, the war does not yet feel fully over.”
Mladenov also praised the US-brokered 20-point peace plan as a breakthrough that “opened the door for the future,” pointing to what the plan is supposed to enable: wide-scale reconstruction plans, Israeli military withdrawal from Gaza, the establishment of a new Palestinian governing body, job creation, and a political horizon to self-determination and statehood. The plan, he said, has since been expanded into a 50-point implementation document that was developed by the BoP and the mediators and discussed with both Israel and Hamas.
He stressed that the plan is based on reciprocity, not trust, and that an independent verification mechanism has been established to monitor compliance. “Each step by one side triggers the next step by the other side. If a step is missed, the next step does not happen.”
Hamas’ disarmament
However, the most central and contentious component of the plan – Hamas disarmament – remains a major hurdle that Mladenov said is delaying the rest of the agreement. “The plan is clear: Hamas needs to step back from governance of Gaza, its weapons need to be decommissioned and Gaza deradicalized” he said. He conditioned Israel’s full withdrawal from Gaza on the fulfilment of other elements of the plan – primarily Hamas’ disarmament and achieving civil governance in Gaza.
Mladenov said he met with Hamas representatives twice as he tried to make progress on disarmament. “Armed factions and militias with their own military command and control systems cannot exist,” he said. The ceasefire plan includes provisions for voluntary buyback of weapons in Gaza, conditional amnesty for those who lay down their arms, and safe passage abroad for those unwilling to accept the framework.
“We are asking the political leadership of those who govern Gaza now to step aside,” Mladenov said. “The important principle at the basis of this framework – one authority, one law, one weapon. You cannot deliver reconstruction with militias on every corner.”
He appeared to place core responsibility on Hamas, accusing the group of “consolidating its grip on the population, taxing people on the street, blocking workers and contractors from building communities and shelters for displaced Gazans.”
“To what end?” he asked, “To squeeze better terms from negotiations?”
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