Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has said a new “intensified” offensive in Gaza will involve Israeli troops holding on to seized territory and significant displacement of the population.
Speaking after officials said Israel’s security cabinet had approved a plan for “conquering” the Gaza Strip and establishing a “sustained presence” there, Netanyahu posted a video on X in which he said Israeli soldiers would not go into Gaza, launch raids and then retreat.
“The intention is the opposite of that,” he said. “Population will be moved, for its own protection.”
Brig Gen Efi Dufferin, the chief Israeli military spokesperson, said in a statement shortly afterwards that Operation Gideon’s Chariots, as the new offensive has been named, would “include a wide-scale attack and the movement of the majority of the strip’s population, this is to protect them in an area sterile of Hamas. And continued airstrikes, elimination of terrorists, and dismantling of infrastructure.”
The plan, which was unanimously approved at a security cabinet meeting late on Sunday, goes beyond any aims so far outlined by Israel for its offensive in the devastated Palestinian territory and is likely to prompt deep international concern and fierce opposition.
“This will inevitably lead to countless more civilians killed and the further destruction of Gaza,” said a spokesperson for António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general. “Gaza is, and must remain, an integral part of a future Palestinian state.”
A spokesperson for the British Foreign Office said: “The UK does not support an expansion of Israel’s military operations in Gaza. Continued fighting is in nobody’s interests.”
After a fragile ceasefire collapsed in mid-March, Israel renewed its bombardment, with troops reinforcing kilometre-deep “buffer zones” along the perimeter of the territory and expanding their hold over much of the north and south of the strip.
In all, more than 70% of Gaza is under Israeli control or covered by orders issued by Israel telling Palestinian civilians to evacuate specific neighbourhoods.
On Sunday, the army chief, Lt Gen Eyal Zamir, said the military was calling up tens of thousands of reservists to allow for conscripted regular troops to be deployed to Gaza for the new offensive.
Zamir has resisted calls by some Israeli ministers for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to take on the job of distributing aid in Gaza, which has been under a tight blockade by Israel for more than two months. Much of the 2.3 million population can no longer find enough to eat and the humanitarian system is close to collapse, aid officials in the territory have said.
Israeli officials told local media that ministers believed there was “currently enough food” in the territory, but that they approved “the possibility of a humanitarian distribution, if necessary, to prevent Hamas from taking control of the supplies and to destroy its governance capabilities”.
Israel says the blockade and intensified bombardments since mid-March are to put pressure on Hamas to release hostages held in Gaza. Militants in the territory still hold 58 hostages seized in Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of about 1,200 people, mostly civilians.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 52,535 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to the health ministry there.
The officials also said Netanyahu “continues to promote” a proposal made in January by Donald Trump to displace the millions of Palestinians living in Gaza to neighbouring countries such as Jordan or Egypt, to allow its reconstruction.
A “voluntary transfer programme for Gaza residents … will be part of the operation’s goals”, the senior security official said.
Trump’s scheduled visit later this month to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE may provide an additional incentive to the Israeli government to conclude a new ceasefire deal and allow aid into Gaza. Trump, who recently said he wanted Netanyahu to be “good to Gaza”, is likely to come under pressure from his hosts to push Israel to make concessions to end the conflict.
Israeli military officials say seizing territory provides Israel with additional leverage in its negotiations with Hamas, and some observers suggest that the public announcement of the new offensive and plans for a longer-term presence in Gaza are merely aimed at putting pressure on the militant Islamist group.
Humanitarian organisations have unanimously rejected Israel’s plan to establish a limited number of aid distribution hubs run by private contractors and guarded by the IDF in southern Gaza.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Sunday accused Israel of trying to shut down the existing aid distribution system run by the UN and its humanitarian partners in order to impose its own supply system.
“[This] contravenes fundamental humanitarian principles … It is dangerous, driving civilians into militarised zones to collect rations, threatening lives … while further entrenching forced displacement,” OCHA said.
Hamas on Monday described the new Israeli framework for aid delivery in Gaza as “political blackmail” and blamed Israel for the war-ravaged territory’s “humanitarian catastrophe”.
In Israel, hundreds of protesters took to the streets in Jerusalem while a coalition representing the majority of families of hostages held by Hamas, about half of whom are thought to be dead, condemned the planned new offensive as a threat the lives of hostages and Israeli soldiers.
Netanyahu’s governing coalition – and so his hold on power – depends heavily on the support of hardline rightwing parties that have long demanded the reoccupation and resettlement of Gaza, which Israel formally left in 2005. A new parliamentary session opened on Monday.
Israeli strikes across Gaza continued overnight and during Monday, killing at least 32 people in the territory, according to hospital staff. Strikes hit Gaza City, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya and among the dead were eight women and children, according to staff at al-Shifa hospital, where the bodies were brought.
