Israel plans to take military control of the whole of the Gaza Strip before handing it over to armed forces, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said.
‘We intend to,’ Netanyahu said when asked if Israel would take control of the entire 26-mile strip.
‘We don’t want to keep it. We want to have a security perimeter. We don’t want to govern it. We don’t want to be there as a governing body.’
It comes as Netanyahu is expected to hold a meeting with security officials to discuss a possible expansion of Israel’s military operation in Gaza after the breakdown of ceasefire talks last month.
The meeting, which was expected to start at 4 pm BST and last two hours, could result in an order for the full reoccupation of Gaza for the first time since Israel withdrew soldiers and settlers two decades ago.
Such a move would be aimed at boosting Israel’s security, but is fraught with humanitarian and diplomatic risks.
The meeting was scheduled for Thursday evening, but it is not clear if it will lead to any immediate decision.
‘We want to hand it over to Arab forces that will govern it properly, without threatening us, and [to give] Gazans a good life,’ Netanyahu said.
The Israeli leader went on to describe how the removal of Hamas from political power in the Strip was a top priority.
‘We intend to in order to ensure our security, remove Hamas from there, enable all the population to be free of Hamas and to pass it to civilian governance that is not Hamas nor anyone advocating the destruction of Israel,’ he said.
He added that the goal is ‘to liberate ourselves and the people of Gaza from the awful terror of Hamas’.
The armed group has previously said it will not agree to disarm until a sovereign Palestinian state is established.
It comes after countries like Canada and France announced plans to recognise a Palestinian state, while the UK said it would if Israel did not meet certain conditions by September.
Indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas, mediated by the U.S., to reach a ceasefire and a hostage deal broke down two weeks ago.
Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump has said on Tuesday that the matter of taking over Gaza was ‘really up to Israel’.
The latest round of negotiations in Qatar broke down after both sides continued to disagree on key issues, such as a permanent ceasefire, Israeli troop withdrawal, and aid distribution.
US envoy Steve Witkoff described the Palestinian armed group as showing ‘a lack of desire’ in response to the latest proposal.
Opinion polls show that most Israelis want the war to end in a deal that would see the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas-led Palestinian militants.
Netanyahu’s government has insisted on total victory over Hamas, which ignited the war with its deadly October 2023 attack on Israel from Gaza.
The idea, pushed especially by far-right ministers in Netanyahu’s coalition, of Israeli forces thrusting into areas they do not already hold in the enclave has generated alarm in Israel.
The mother of one hostage urged people on Thursday to take to the streets to voice their opposition to expanding the campaign.
The Hostages Families Forum, which represents captives held in Gaza, urged military Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir to oppose widening the war and the government to accept a deal that would bring the war to an end and free the remaining hostages.
Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday that the military would carry out the government’s decisions until all war objectives were achieved.
Israeli leaders have long insisted that Hamas be disarmed and have no future role in a demilitarised Gaza and that the hostages be freed.
The U.N. has called reports about a possible expansion of Israel’s military operations in Gaza ‘deeply alarming’ if true.
Recent videos of Israeli hostages Evyatar David, 24, and Rom Braslavski, 21, trapped in Gaza sparked uproar in Israel and renewed calls for their immediate return after more than 670 days in captivity.
In footage released by Hamas, David could be was seen bare chested on a dirty mattress inside a tunnel in Gaza.
He was filmed writing on a piece of paper on the wall and walking around in the tunnel which is just tall enough for him stand up. A clip shows him digging what he says will be his own grave.
In a statement , the David family said: ‘We are forced to witness our beloved son and brother, Evyatar David, deliberately and cynically starved in Hamas’s tunnels in Gaza – a living skeleton, buried alive.’
As images and videos of emaciated Gazan children continue to emerge from the Strip, Israel has found itself in an escalating war of words over who is responsible for the humanitarian situation.
Israel insists that Gaza is not facing ‘starvation’ crisis and claims Hamas militants are responsible for the looting of aid.
But human rights groups have accused Israel of deliberately starving the Strip as a war tactic – an accusation it denies.
The UN has alleged that as many as 1,000 Palestinians have been killed while trying to access the aid distributed from U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation centres in the Strip.
Last week, the leading international authority on food crises, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), said in a new alert that the ‘worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip’, predicting ‘widespread death’ without immediate action.
It came after Israel announced it would begin 10-hour ‘tactical pauses’ in its military operations in three densely-populated areas of Gaza until further notice, to allow aid corridors for UN convoys.
Israel also resumed airdrops of humanitarian supplies into the encalve after mounting international pressure.
An arm of the Israeli government, the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (Cogat), said on Thursday that ‘over 300 trucks entered daily this week’.
The group provides daily updates on its delivery of aid into the Strip to combat ‘misleading numbers and information’ which create ‘panic and false narratives’.
‘Today’s 107 pallets of humanitarian aid were airdropped in cooperation with the UAE, Jordan, Germany, Belgium and France.
‘We will continue to work in order to improve the humanitarian response in the Gaza Strip, along with the international community, while refuting the false claims of deliberate starvation in Gaza,’ the group said on Wednesday in one of its daily updates.
Hamas-led militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 251 others in an attack on October 7, 2023, attack that ignited the war.
They still hold 50 hostages, around 20 of them believed to be alive. Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed more than 61,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
