Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel declared on Monday that his country is “on the eve of a forceful entry to Gaza” after his security cabinet approved a new plan for tens of thousands of additional soldiers to seize and hold territory in the embattled enclave and relocate Palestinians to the south.
In video posted on social media as reservists began receiving notices of their call-up, Netanyahu said top military officials had recommended what he called an “intensive” escalation of the 18-month war. “It’s time to launch the concluding moves,” Netanyahu said the military officials told him, adding that the new campaign would help bring home the hostages still held in Gaza.
The escalation followed more than two months in which Israel continued to blockade and bombard the Gaza Strip as ceasefire talks to free the remaining hostages ground to a near standstill. Israel has barred any humanitarian aid to Gaza in an effort to press Hamas to surrender, leading aid groups to denounce mounting deprivation among Palestinians there. Netanyahu’s opponents said the expanded campaign would endanger the remaining hostages’ lives and not fundamentally change the dynamic that 18 months of war has wrought.Israeli officials said the offensive would start slowly in anticipation of ceasefire talks that are ongoing ahead of President Trump’s trip next week to the region for meetings in several Arab capitals. But the officials said if a deal is not reached soon, the expanded operation would commence in earnest.
David Mencer, a govt spokesman, described the plan as a renewed effort to increase pressure on Hamas to release the hostages and to destroy all of Hamas’s infrastructure, both above and below ground. He said the campaign calls for the “holding of territories” by Israeli soldiers for an indefinite period of time “to prevent Hamas from taking it back”.
Mencer said the intent was not a permanent occupation of Gaza, a scenario that would almost certainly spur international objections, as would the forced relocation of Palestinians from their homes in the north. Effie Defrin, the Israeli military spokesman, said Israel’s operation will include “a wide attack, involving moving most of Gaza’s population. This is for their protection in an area clean of Hamas.”
The Israeli call-up of soldiers is seen as a message to Netanyahu’s hard-line supporters, some of whom were dismayed that the military had not completed the task of eradicating Hamas. Promising a more intense phase of the war could be good domestic politics for him.
As part of the offensive, Israel would move “the Gazan population south for its own defence,” Mencer said. The plan echoed earlier actions when Israel ordered a mass evacuation of northern Gaza before its ground invasion in late 2023. An official said the understanding was that the military would move to capture more territory beyond what it was already holding, but the person cautioned it was not clear whether Israel had plans to occupy all of Gaza at this point.The cabinet also approved a new mechanism for allowing the distribution of humanitarian help in the enclave.
