Israel’s occupation of Gaza, Lebanon, Syria extends beyond what maps show

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Since October 7, 2023, Israeli military control maps in its surrounding areas are no longer merely lines announced in official statements or drawn on military maps.

After every ceasefire agreement, a map has emerged, and after every map, questions on the ground arise: Where do the forces actually stand? Do the field markers, demolition operations, and military positions match what is declared on paper?

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The Digital Investigations Team at Al Jazeera’s Open Source Unit tracked three areas where new borders for the Israeli military presence have taken shape: the Gaza Strip, southern Lebanon, and southern Syria.

In Gaza, we looked at the “Yellow Line“, which appeared on the ceasefire agreement maps as the limit of Israeli control within the Strip, designated by yellow concrete markers on the ground.

In southern Lebanon, the investigation looked at the military zone declared by Israel following a subsequent ceasefire agreement with that country, before examining what satellite imagery shows as the actual situation in impacted villages and towns.

As for southern Syria, where no similar official Israeli map exists, we looked at fixed military outposts beyond the “Alpha Line” that separates the occupied Golan Heights from the rest of Syria.

Since each area provides a different type of evidence, the investigation combined official maps published by the Israeli army, satellite imagery captured after the ceasefire agreements, spatial calculations using Geographic Information System (GIS) and data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED).

Gaza: When the ‘Yellow Line’ isn’t enough to draw reality

In Gaza, the story begins with a line drawn by the Israeli army on its maps following the “ceasefire” agreement signed on October 10, 2025. Known as the “Yellow Line”, it was presented as the boundary separating Israeli military control zones within Gaza, covering an area estimated at about 200sq km (77sq miles), according to Israeli maps.

However, when Al Jazeera’s team tried to trace the reality on the ground, a gap emerged between what was declared on the maps and what the imagery and field data revealed.

The investigation relied on satellite imagery and geolocation of the yellow concrete blocks placed by the Israeli military up to early February 2026.

The analysis showed that these markers did not always stop at the boundary of the official military line published on the Israeli maps; rather, they exceeded it in several areas, sometimes by hundreds of metres.

The significance of these blocks lies not only in their locations but also in their movement. On November 20, the Government Media Office in Gaza announced that Israeli forces had advanced into the eastern areas of Gaza City and moved the yellow markers westwards, expanding their area of control by approximately 300 metres (984 feet), coinciding with the displacement of Palestinian families from the Shujayea and Tuffah neighbourhoods.

This movement was not a marginal detail on a map crowded with lines. According to the maps of the October 2025 agreement, the “Yellow Line” covered about 53 percent of Gaza’s total area.

However, this percentage is higher in some areas, particularly in the northern Strip and Gaza City, where the area under Israeli military control grew from 67.3sq km (26sq miles) — about half the area of the north — to 73.9sq km (28.5sq miles), which equals 54.7 percent of its total area, marking a 4.7 percent increase.

Southern Lebanon: Satellite imagery tests declared line

The pattern that emerged in Gaza is repeated in southern Lebanon, but over a larger area. According to official maps published by the Israeli military following the ceasefire agreement signed on April 17, 2026, the area of the zones under Israeli military control in southern Lebanon reached about 570sq km (220sq miles). This area represents more than half of the total land seized after October 7, 2023, in Gaza, Syria and southern Lebanon.

However, the question, as in Gaza, does not stop at the borders declared by the maps. Did the military activity remain within the scope defined by the Israeli army? Or does what happened after the ceasefire reveal broader movement on the ground?

To test this, we conducted a review of satellite imagery covering the period between April 24 and May 19, 2026.

The analysis showed that demolition operations were not limited to the areas located within the “Yellow Line” announced by the Israeli military last April; traces of destruction appeared in several towns located outside its borders.

Comparisons between the images reveal that buildings were destroyed even after the ceasefire ostensibly came into effect in Lebanon in areas that do not fall within the declared line. Among these examples is the town of Zawtar al-Sharqiyah, where an image taken on April 24, 2026, shows the town before the demolition operations, while another image dated May 19, 2026, shows the aftermath of the destruction following the demolitions.

Southern Syria: A map without official declaration

In southern Syria, the story does not begin with a declared line as in Gaza and southern Lebanon. There are no official Israeli maps defining a “Yellow Line” or a clear scope for military control, making testing the reality on the ground more complex. Therefore, the investigation did not rely on rereading borders previously declared by Israel, but rather on independent geographic work tracing what actually formed on the ground.

This path leads to a network of permanent Israeli military positions established beyond the “Alpha Line”, which separates the occupied Golan Heights from the rest of the Syrian territories under the Disengagement Agreement signed between Israel and Syria in 1974.

When analysing these positions geographically, they do not appear as separate or isolated points, but rather connect to form a military strip stretching from Jabal al-Sheikh in the north to the Yarmouk River near the Jordanian border in the south.

By drawing a perimeter around these military positions and the areas over which they exert de facto control, the investigation estimates the area of land under Israeli military control in southern Syria at approximately 235sq km (90.7sq miles). However, this figure does not represent officially declared borders by the Israeli side, but rather an estimate of the scope of actual control as reflected by the permanent military infrastructure deployed on the ground.

Yet, the permanent positions alone do not reveal the complete picture. There is another layer of data that broadens the understanding of Israeli military activity in southern Syria, showing that movement is not restricted to the perimeter of the permanent military infrastructure.

Based on data from the ACLED project, Al Jazeera created a map documenting more than 800 incursions carried out by Israeli forces outside the buffer zone and inside Syrian territory between December 8, 2024, and January 16, 2026.

The temporal and geographical distribution of these incursions indicates that the Israeli military footprint in southern Syria is neither static nor confined to permanent sites, but rather shifts frequently within a broader range. Among the deepest of these incursions, the investigation documented an operation that reached a depth of approximately 63km (39 miles) into Syrian territory, near Horsh al-Jubailiya in the Deraa countryside, in April 2025.

Syria presents a different picture from Gaza and southern Lebanon. In the first two cases, the analysis begins with a declared line and then tests it against the ground. In southern Syria, however, the map takes shape from the bottom up: fixed military positions delineate a direct scope of control, while frequent incursions reveal a broader operational domain.

The analysis concludes that the Israeli military presence in southern Syria has gradually transitioned from a pattern of fixed military outposts to deep incursions into Syrian territory. While the estimate of 235sq km reflects the approximate area of the regions under direct military occupation, data from more than 800 incursions reveals a zone of operations wherein Israeli forces frequently manoeuvre outside those borders.

The overall picture

The investigation estimates the total area under Israeli military control to be approximately 1,000sq km (386.1sq miles), distributed across three main areas following October 7, 2023: the Gaza Strip, southern Lebanon, and southern Syria.

The figure of 1,000sq km is not based on a single source; in Gaza and southern Lebanon, it was calculated based on the borders declared by the Israeli army itself, whereas in southern Syria, it relied on an independent geographic estimate of areas of de facto military influence, given the absence of similar declared Israeli maps.