Israel sets sights on full military takeover of Gaza

TEL AVIV, Israel – Israeli leaders early Friday approved a plan for the gradual military takeover of all of the Gaza Strip, a pivotal and risky decision that went against the recommendations of the Israeli military and promised to take the nearly two-year war into uncharted territory.

After 10 hours of deliberations, a majority of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet backed his proposal to prepare to conquer the core of Gaza City, according to a predawn statement from his office,

At a later stage, the military is expected to push into central areas of the enclave where Hamas is believed to be holding Israeli hostages and where Israeli troops have largely refrained from operating before.

The goal, according to the statement, is to achieve a decisive victory over Hamas, which led the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that started the war. The plan also allows for the provision of humanitarian aid to the civilian population “outside the combat zones,” it said.

The cabinet also approved five principles for ending the war, including the disarming of Hamas; the return of all 50 hostages, 20 of whom are believed to be alive; the demilitarization of Gaza; Israeli security control over the enclave; and the establishment of an alternative civilian administration there that involves neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority, the rival, Western-backed body that exercises limited control in parts of the occupied West Bank.

It is likely to take the military days, at least, to call up reserve forces, carry out troop deployments for a push into Gaza City and allow time for the forced evacuation of tens of thousands of Palestinians from the new areas of combat.

Some analysts have said that the plan for the new offensive may be a threat to compel Hamas to offer concessions in stalled ceasefire negotiations. Days ago, American and Israeli officials floated the idea of an all-or-nothing deal for Gaza that would see all the hostages released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, and the war end under certain conditions. Otherwise, the Israeli military would continue its campaign.

The Israeli military has said that it already conquered about 75% of Gaza. The coastal strip stretching from Gaza City in the north to Khan Younis in the south is the main area outside Israeli control. Many of the 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, including those displaced from their homes, have squeezed into tents, makeshift shelters and apartments in those areas.

Netanyahu said Thursday that Israel planned to take control of all of Gaza, bucking the advice of the Israeli military and warnings that expanding operations could endanger the hostages being held there and kill more Palestinian civilians.

He made the comments in an interview with Fox News before the security cabinet meeting. They came as talks to achieve a ceasefire and the release of the hostages have hit an impasse, with Israeli and Hamas officials blaming each other for the deadlock.

When asked whether Israel would take over all of Gaza, he responded, “We intend to.”

Netanyahu said the move would “assure our security,” remove Hamas from power and enable the transfer of the civilian administration of Gaza to another party.

“We want to liberate ourselves and the people of Gaza from the awful terror of Hamas,” he said in an excerpt from the interview, without providing details on any planned operation.

The prime minister, however, suggested Israel was not interested in maintaining permanent control over the entire enclave. “We don’t want to keep it,” he added. “We don’t want to govern it. We don’t want to be there as a governing body. We want to hand it over to Arab forces.” In the excerpt published by Fox News, Netanyahu offered few specifics about his plan.

Hamas, in a statement Thursday, said Netanyahu’s comments “represent a clear reversal of the course of negotiations and clearly reveal the true motives behind his withdrawal from the final round.”

Israel’s expansion of military action would also be in defiance of many other countries urging an end to the nearly two-year war in Gaza. In recent weeks, Israel has come under growing pressure from some long-standing allies to do more to address a hunger crisis in the enclave.

The Israeli military’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, has pushed back against the plan, according to four Israeli security officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues. He has shared concerns about the exhaustion and fitness of reservists and about the military becoming responsible for governing millions of Palestinians, they said.

The military leadership would prefer a new ceasefire instead of ramping up fighting, according to three of the officials. A majority of the ministers believed that the alternative plan put forward by the military would not result in the defeat of Hamas or the release of the hostages, according to the statement from Netanyahu’s office.

The military believes it could seize the remaining parts of Gaza within months, but setting up a system similar to the one it oversees in the Israeli-occupied West Bank would require up to five years of sustained combat, three of the security officials said.

On Tuesday, Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that the Israeli military would carry out any decision made by the security Cabinet.

Members of Israel’s opposition and the families of the hostages held by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza have cautioned against expanding the military operation.

“Conquering Gaza is a bad operational idea, a bad moral idea and a bad economic idea,” Yair Lapid, the leader of the parliamentary opposition, told reporters Wednesday after a meeting with Netanyahu.

The families of hostages worry that extending Israeli control could lead the military to inadvertently kill their loved ones or Hamas to execute them.

About 250 people were taken hostage during the 2023 Hamas-led attack, and more than three dozen hostages have been killed while in captivity, according to an investigation by The New York Times.

For Palestinian civilians, the possibility that Israel could escalate its operation has heightened fears that many more residents could be killed and that their already miserable living conditions in Gaza could become worse.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.