Israel security cabinet backs Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to take control of Gaza
The operation to conquer Gaza City, which comprises 25 per cent of the strip the IDF has yet to enter, will likely require the mass evacuation of the area where about one million Gazans live.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has secured a green light from his security cabinet to extend the war in Gaza by occupying Gaza City, home to more than a million Palestinian civilians, despite intensifying criticism of the war at home and abroad and opposition from his own military chief.
The approval came hours after Mr Netanyahu said Israel intended to take full control of Gaza – 20 years on from the Israeli military’s full withdrawal from the strip – to remove Hamas and then hand control to an Arab authority.
A statement released from Mr Netanyahu’s office after a 10-hour cabinet meeting confirmed the Israeli Defence Force would take over Gaza City while “providing humanitarian aid to the civilian population outside the combat zones”.
“A decisive majority of Cabinet ministers believed that the alternative plan presented to the Cabinet would not achieve the defeat of Hamas or the return of the abductees,” the statement said.
That alternative plan, proposed by Israeli Defence Force chief of staff Eyal Zamir, was believed to favour encircling Gaza City and other neighbourhoods in which hostages might be held, rather than Mr Netanyahu’s intrusive operation into the heart of the areas.
Lieutenant General Zamir has said expanding the military campaign risks multiplying civilian Palestinian deaths, now more than 61,000, as well as that of Israeli soldiers and the remaining hostages, believed to be held in central Gaza, while trapping an exhausted military in a war with no end.
But Mr Netanyahu told Fox News ahead of the security meeting that the plan was to take full control of Gaza and then transfer control to “Arab forces that will govern it properly, without threatening us, and giving Gazans a good life”.
“We don’t want to keep it. We want to have a security perimeter,” he said. “We don’t want to govern it. We want to liberate ourselves and liberate the people of Gaza from the awful terror of Hamas.”
Australia was quick to condemn the military expansion on Friday, which the UN warned earlier this week risked “catastrophic consequences”.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong urged Israel to “not go down this path, which will only worsen the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza”.
“Permanent forced displacement is a violation of international law. With international partners, Australia maintains our call for a ceasefire, the return of hostages and aid to flow unimpeded,” she said in a statement, adding a two-state solution was the only pathway to secure an enduring peace.
Hamas also condemned it as “a blatant coup” against the negotiation process with one Hamas official, Osama Hamdan, telling Al Jazeera the group would treat any force formed to govern Gaza as an “occupying” force linked to Israel.
Israeli opposition leader Israeli Yair Lapid said the occupation of Gaza was a “very bad idea” and a “a disaster that will lead to many more disasters”.
“The people of Israel are not interested in this war. We will pay too heavy a price, both in human lives and billions of shekels of the Israeli taxpayer,” he said.
Earlier on Thursday, families of the remaining hostages set sail in a flotilla from the port of Ashkelon to “get as close as possible to their loved ones” in the Gaza Strip.
Out of 251 hostages captured during Hamas’s 2023 attack, 49 are still being held in Gaza, including 27 the military says are dead.
Videos released by Hamas last week showed two of those surviving hostages emaciated and starving. One of them was digging his own grave.
Crowds of protesters outside Mr Netanyahu’s office on Thursday, holding banners and chanting anti-war slogans, demanded an end to the war and a return of the hostages.
“Escalating the fighting is a death sentence and immediate disappearance for our loved one – look us in the eyes and choose to sacrifice them,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement. “This is the time, put a comprehensive deal on the table that will bring them all back together - all 50 hostages.”
Having so far failed to pressure Hamas into releasing those last hostages, however, Israel has few good options left.
A statement issued on X by the Prime Minister’s office after the marathon meeting said the security cabinet had approved five objectives towards ending the 22-month war.
They included the full disarmament of Hamas, a return of all hostages both living and dead, the demilitarisation of the Gaza Strip, establishment of full Israeli security over the territory and eventual creation of an alternative civilian government that would be neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority.
It did not explicitly say the security cabinet had backed Mr Netanyahu’s plan to reoccupy the entire Gaza Strip though it is expected the military will first occupy Gaza City and at a later stage – if Hamas does not return to the negotiating table – push into central areas of the enclave where Israeli hostages are believed to still be held.
Those areas together make up a full 25 per cent of the war-torn strip that the IDF has yet to conquer. Most Gazan civilians now live in those areas, still under Hamas control.
Soon after the announcement Axios reporter Barak Ravid said on X, citing an unidentified Israeli official, that the first phase of the plan would see all Palestinian civilians moved from Gaza City to central Gaza camps and other areas by October 7 – the anniversary of the 2023 Hamas massacre of 1200 Israelis that sparked Israel’s military invasion.
The operation would also involve a siege of remaining Hamas militants in Gaza City, and a simultaneous ground offensive there that will require at least 30,000 additional Israeli Defence Force reservists to be called into active duty, he added.
But the Prime Minister’s statement also provided no detail about which authority Israel would ultimately transfer control.
One Jordanian official told Reuters Arab countries would “only support what Palestinians agree and decide on”, and that security in Gaza should be handled through ”legitimate Palestinian institutions”.
Some estimates suggest full occupation of Gaza could cost the state of Israel at least $US10 billion annually – two per cent of its annual GDP – in food, water, electricity and medical services for all Gazan civilians.
Mr Netanyahu is known to favour a plan that involves seizing first Gaza City and evacuating close to a million residents, before establishing civilian infrastructure including hospitals and camps for evacuees, and widening the distribution of humanitarian aid from four to 14 aid sites operating 24 hours a day.
Critical aid shortages in Gaza that have caused widespread hunger are already said to be easing, with more food coming into the war-torn territory and food prices reportedly falling.
But the international outcry over the plight of Palestinian civilians has worked in Hamas’ favour, taking much of the focus off and pressure off the Islamic militant group that has brutally controlled the Palestinian territory since 2007.
Ceasefire talks collapsed late last month after Hamas went back on terms it had previously agreed to.
With domestic and international pressure on Israel continuing to mount, Mr Netanyau is hoping his new plan will force Hamas back to the negotiating table on its terms.
But by telegraphing an eventual handover of control, there is also a risk that Hamas could simply wait out the occupying force until a new authority takes over.
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