Since October 7th, Israel Has Seized More Land Than It Has in Decades
In the two and a half years since the Hamas attack of October 7th, 2023, Israel has taken military control of roughly 1,000 square kilometers of land across Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria. That is an area larger than many major cities, and Israel has said it plans to stay indefinitely.
It is the largest expansion of Israeli-occupied territory in decades.
Gaza
Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Following the October 7th attack, its troops returned and began a broad invasion. A ceasefire announced in October 2025 led to a partial withdrawal to a demarcated zone. That ceasefire is now deadlocked.
Israeli troops have since pushed further west. They now control at least 60% of Gaza, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he wants that figure to reach 70%.
More than 2 million people, virtually the entire population of Gaza, have been squeezed into tent cities dependent on international aid. The military has bulldozed wide swaths of the territory. The area currently under Israeli control contains most of Gaza’s agricultural land, and it remains inaccessible to Palestinians.
Israel now holds 194 square kilometers of Gaza, according to the Israeli rights group Gisha.
Lebanon
Israel occupied southern Lebanon from 1982 to 2000. When it withdrew, the United Nations drew a boundary between the two countries known as the Blue Line.
A ceasefire in October 2024 ended a year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, but Israeli troops remained on five hilltops. That ceasefire collapsed in March 2026, days into the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. When that conflict halted in April, Israel announced it would occupy a zone up to 10 kilometers deep inside Lebanese territory.
Evacuation warnings stretching beyond the areas under Israeli control have forced approximately 1.2 million Lebanese to flee their homes. Unlike previous occupations of southern Lebanon, Israel has warned civilians against returning. Several villages along the border have been largely demolished.
Israel now holds 608 square kilometers of Lebanese territory, according to the Carnegie Middle East Center.
Syria
After Syrian President Bashar Assad fell from power in December 2024, Israel moved troops into a United Nations buffer zone in southern Syria that had been patrolled by a UN force since 1974. Israel said it was concerned about potential attacks from Syrian rebel groups and wanted to disrupt Iran’s ability to smuggle weapons to Hezbollah through Syrian territory.
The UN and international critics say the seizure violates the 1974 ceasefire agreement. There have been no cross-border attacks from Syria into Israel since Assad’s fall, except for two rockets from a little-known militant group.
Syria’s interim government has called on Israel to withdraw. Israel has not done so.
The area under Israeli control in Syria is 235 square kilometers, according to the UN.
The West Bank
Beyond the new seizures, Israel has continued expanding settlements in the occupied West Bank. Since 2022, the government has approved 47 new settlements and formalized or expanded 55 existing communities. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been displaced from their homes in the West Bank as a result of expanded military operations since the war began.
The international community considers the settlements illegal. They have put severe restrictions on daily Palestinian life and are widely regarded as the central obstacle to any lasting peace agreement, as they are built on the land Palestinians seek for a future state.
Their continued expansion has been enabled by settler leaders holding key positions inside the Israeli government and a United States administration that has shown itself to be broadly supportive of settlement growth.
What One Thousand Square Kilometers Means
Taken together, the territories now under Israeli military control across Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria amount to roughly 5% of Israel’s original area at its founding. Israel has described all of it as temporary buffer zones necessary for security. It has also said it plans to remain indefinitely.
Buffer zones without a withdrawal timeline are not buffer zones. They are occupations.
More than 3 million people across Gaza and Lebanon have been displaced by Israeli land seizures and evacuation orders since October 2023. Towns have been demolished. Agricultural land has been seized. Civilians have been warned not to return to their own homes.
The United States, under the Trump administration, has provided the military support, the diplomatic cover, and the arms that have made this expansion possible. Every week that it continues without American pressure to reverse it is a week the United States owns a share of what is happening on that land.