Israel’s defence minister threatens permanent occupation of parts of Gaza

The warning was aimed at pressuring Hamas to release its remaining hostages as ground operation expands and strikes continue.

A Palestinian woman carries her belongings as she flees Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip on March 21. Picture: Bashar Taleb / AFP

Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz threatened permanent occupation of parts of the Gaza Strip and the displacement of its population if Hamas doesn’t release its remaining hostages, ramping up pressure on the group after ending a two-month ceasefire this week.

Israeli ground troops returned to Gaza after a wave of deadly air strikes earlier this week, tipping the territory back toward full-scale war. The ground operations are the latest in a series of escalators steps Israel has rolled out in recent weeks as talks to extend the ceasefire deal faltered.

Katz said Friday he had instructed the military to seize parts of the strip and evacuate their populations, a day after Israeli troops took back control of much of a key corridor dividing the enclave’s north and south. “As long as Hamas continues its refusal, it will lose more and more land that will be added to Israel,” Katz said.

Katz said Hamas’s refusal to return all the hostages could lead to “permanent Israeli control of the territory,” and suggested that parts of the enclave could be occupied. He pledged continued assaults by air, land and sea.

Israeli soldiers stand in a position along Israel's southern border with the northern Gaza Strip on March 20. Picture: Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP

Israeli security analysts said the threat appeared to be a pressure tactic and unlikely to be carried out completely. “He’s basically telling Hamas: ‘You, guys, either release them, or I remove your people and build settlements in the strip,’” said Ahron Bregman, a political scientist with the Department of War Studies at King’s College London.

“It seems Israel is trying to find all kinds of leverage to squeeze Hamas to agree to a deal,” said Yoel Guzansky, a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies, a think tank based in Tel Aviv. “They’re trying to make up for some of what they gave Hamas earlier in order to get some of that leverage back.”

The Israeli military said late Thursday that its troops were active in the Shaboura area of Rafah, in southern Gaza, where they dismantled “terrorist infrastructure,” but didn’t provide more details about the operation. It said troops were also active in the north, where they worked to dismantle infrastructure at a health facility it said was used by Hamas.

The military said Hamas used the health facility, known as the Turkish hospital, as a command-and-control centre to direct and carry out attacks against Israel. Air strikes also continued throughout the strip, the military said.

Israeli officials have pledged to ratchet up pressure on the US-designated terrorist group to return 59 hostages that remain inside Gaza, as many as 24 of whom the government believes might still be alive. Among them are one American-Israeli, Edan Alexander, and the bodies of four other US citizens who died in Hamas captivity. Freeing Alexander is a priority for the Trump administration.

As part of its efforts to pressure Hamas, Israel in early March halted the entry of humanitarian aid into the strip, where almost all of its population of roughly two million people have been displaced. A week later, it cut off its remaining electricity supply to the enclave, though an Israel official said that by then its residents were mostly using generators and solar panels.

Hamas didn’t immediately respond to Katz’s comments.

Senior Hamas official Khaled Meshaal in an online symposium on Thursday blamed Israel for the failure to advance ceasefire talks, saying it had no intention of ending the war.

The ceasefire that started on Jan. 19 brought a fragile pause to the war, which began more than 17 months ago. The conflict was triggered by the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, when about 1,200 people were killed and some 250 others were taken hostage inside Gaza, according to Israeli authorities.

A Palestinian man hugged the body of a baby following overnight air strikes in the northern Gaza Strip, at a hospital in Beit Lahia on Friday. Photo: Bashar Taleb/AFP

The ceasefire was meant to be carried out in phases, the first of which saw the return of 33 Israeli hostages in exchange for the release of more than 1,700 Palestinians who were held in Israeli prisons. That phase concluded in early March, but negotiations meant to usher in phase two — geared toward the release of all remaining hostages and a permanent end to the war — never began.

Negotiators have shuttled back and forth between the Qatari capital, Doha, and Cairo for weeks to try to move talks forward without success. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier this week that his team had accepted a proposal put forth by US mediators, but Hamas refused. Netanyahu blamed the group for endangering Palestinian civilians.

Hamas blamed Israel for endangering the lives of the remaining hostages.

Netanyahu’s government has come under pressure to secure their return, particularly after some of those freed under the ceasefire emerged emaciated, injured and traumatised. Recent polling shows public support for the war effort is waning and a majority would end the war to secure the release of the hostages.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said Thursday that Israeli military operations had killed more than 500 people, many of them children, since the strikes began on Tuesday. The figures don’t specify how many were combatants.

The Wall Street Journal