The Israeli military is building a barrier along the line that cuts Gaza in two, and it is building it out of earth, which is to say it is building it to last. More than 23 kilometres of berm now run through the territory, separating the half of Gaza the regime controls from the half where two million Palestinians remain, according to satellite imagery reviewed by the Associated Press.

That is more than half the length of the entire strip. It runs through neighbourhoods the military demolished to clear its path, and most of the Palestinians penned behind it do not know it is there, because approaching the line means being shot.

The regime says the barrier protects its troops and the Israeli communities near Gaza. It has declined to say how far it will extend. Alongside it, the military has built what it calls a security zone, equipped with intelligence and technological assets, which is a great deal of permanent apparatus to install along a line everyone was assured is temporary.

That is the detail worth holding onto. The line the berm follows is the yellow line, the boundary Israel withdrew to under the first phase of the October ceasefire, the line it was meant to withdraw behind further as the deal progressed. It has done the opposite. First it laid concrete blocks to mark the line.

Then it moved them, shunting the blocks hundreds of metres westward into Palestinian land in January and again in June, seizing ground the map never gave it. Now it is pouring earthworks along the line it has already redrawn, converting a boundary it was supposed to abandon into one it cannot easily be made to give back.

You do not fortify ground you plan to leave, you do not build a security zone across territory you intend to return, you do not entrench a temporary line unless you have decided it is permanent. The bodies charged with holding the regime to the deal have nothing to say about any of it: U.S. Central Command, tasked with monitoring the ceasefire, would not comment, and neither would the Board of Peace. The line was always going to become the border. We suspected it in January. We can stop suspecting it now, and nor should you.