Israel poised to order new Gaza war plan
Netanyahu was expected to meet security chiefs in Jerusalem on Tuesday to discuss new orders, local media reported, even as Israel's diplomats convened a UN Security Council meeting in New York to highlight the plight of Israelis held in Gaza.
The timing of the security meeting has not been officially confirmed.
Israeli broadcaster Channel 12 said Netanyahu would meet the army chief of staff and the defence and army ministers. Unnamed senior officials told Israeli media he intends to order the re-occupation of Gaza.
"Netanyahu wants the Israeli army to conquer the entire Gaza Strip," said a report on public broadcaster Kan.
Netanyahu also said Monday he would convene the cabinet later in the week to approve the new instructions.
"Several cabinet members who spoke with the prime minister confirmed that he has decided to extend the fight to areas where hostages might be held," Kan reported.
The private daily Maariv declared: "The die is cast. We're en route for the total conquest of Gaza."
However, some major media outlets such as Channel 12 have questioned whether the rumoured expansion of military operations is merely a negotiating tactic, and whether Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir would oppose such a decision.
"The Chief of Staff is required to express his professional opinion clearly and unequivocally to the political leadership. I am convinced that he will do so," Foreign Minister Gideon Saar wrote on X.
While the reconquest plan has not been officially confirmed, it has already drawn an angry response from the Palestinian Authority and Gaza's Hamas-run government, which insisted it will not shift its position on ceasefire talks.
"The ball is in the hands of... (Israel) and the Americans," senior Hamas official Husam Badran told AFP, adding that the militant group wanted to "end the war and the famine".
- Desperate families -
After 22 months of combat sparked by the October 7, 2023 cross-border attacks by Hamas that killed 1,219 people and saw hundreds kidnapped, the Israeli army has devastated large parts of the Palestinian territory.
More than 60,933 Palestinians have been killed, according to figures from Hams-run Gaza's health ministry, and humanitarian agencies have warned that the territory's 2.4 million people are slipping into a catastrophic famine.
But Netanyahu is under pressure on several fronts.
Domestically, the desperate and vocal families of the 49 remaining hostages are demanding a ceasefire to bring their loved ones home.
Around the world, humanitarians are pushing for a truce to allow in food to the starving, and several European capitals have announced plans to recognise Palestinian statehood, despite fierce US and Israeli opposition.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu's far-right allies in his ruling coalition want to seize the opportunity of the war to reoccupy Gaza and tighten control of the occupied West Bank.
Foreign Minister Saar was in New York, where Israel's US ally was helping organise a Security Council meeting to focus world attention on the fate of the hostages.
The defence ministry civil affairs agency for the Palestinian territories, COGAT, said Tuesday that Israel will partially reopen private sector trade with Gaza to reduce its reliance on UN and aid agency convoys and international military airdrops.
"As part of formulating the mechanism, a limited number of local merchants were approved by the defence establishment, subject to several criteria and strict security screening," COGAT said.
Israel has been fighting Hamas in Gaza for 22 months and imposed a total blockade on March 2, partially lifted in May to allow a US-backed private agency to open food distribution centres.
Aid convoys and airdrops by Arab and European militaries resumed last month, as UN-mandated expert reports warned famine was unfolding in the war-torn territory.
The COGAT statement said private sector deliveries would be paid for by monitored bank transfers and be subject to inspections by the Israeli military before entering Gaza, "to prevent the involvement of the Hamas terrorist organisation."
- Staple foods -
Permitted goods under the new mechanism will include food staples, fruit, vegetables, baby formula and hygiene products, COGAT said.
On Monday. Netanyahu insisted Israel's war goals remained "the defeat of the enemy, the release of our hostages and the promise that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel".
His statement came after hundreds of retired Israeli security chiefs wrote to US President Donald Trump to urge him to convince Netanyahu to end the war, arguing that Israel has already scored a military victory and should seek to negotiate the hostages' release.
The families of the hostages are also horrified by talk of escalation, accusing the government of putting their relatives in renewed danger, even as Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad release propaganda videos showing emaciated captives.
dc-hba/glp/ser
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
San Francisco Chronicle
27 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Stanford Daily sues Trump administration over deportation threats
Stanford's student newspaper sued the Trump administration on Wednesday for threatening to deport any noncitizen who criticizes Israel or U.S. foreign policy, saying the government is violating freedom of speech and intimidating campus journalists into censoring their own articles. 'In the United States of America, no one should fear a midnight knock on the door for voicing the wrong opinion,' lawyers for the Stanford Daily, the university's independent 133-year-old publication, wrote in a lawsuit filed in federal court in San Jose. They said staff writers holding legal U.S. visas 'are declining assignments related to the conflict in the Middle East, worried that even reporting on the conflict will endanger their immigration status.' One editor resigned from the newspaper, another editor and present and former reporters have asked to have their articles removed from the website and 'international students have also largely stopped talking to Stanford Daily journalists,' the suit said. It was filed a day after Stanford officials announced that they might lay off 363 non-teaching employees this fall because of a $750 million tax increase imposed by President Donald Trump's budget bill. The lawsuit is among multiple legal challenges to the Trump administration's attacks on pro-Palestinian protesters and their universities. A central issue, cited by the newspaper's lawyers, is Secretary of State Marco Rubio's claim that he can order deportation of any noncitizen for statements he considers 'anti-American' or 'anti-Israel.' Rubio cited a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 that allows the secretary of state to revoke a noncitizen's legal status if the secretary decides the person's 'beliefs, statements or associations … compromise a compelling United States foreign policy interest.' He invoked that provision against Mahmoud Khalil, a legal U.S. resident and pro-Palestinian activist at Columbia University who was arrested in March and held in a Louisiana jail for 104 days before a federal judge ordered his release. Other campus activists have also been jailed, and Stanford reported that the visas of six students were revoked less than two weeks after Rubio's announcement in March. The lawsuit said Rubio's claim that a student's criticism of Israel harms a 'compelling United States foreign policy interest' is questionable — but regardless, his actions violate the Constitution's First Amendment, which protects noncitizens under a 1945 Supreme Court ruling. 'The First Amendment cements America's promise that the government may not subject a speaker to disfavored treatment because those in power do not like his or her message,' wrote the attorneys, Marc Van Der Hout of San Francisco and Conor Fitzpatrick of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. They asked a federal judge for an injunction that would halt the threats of deportation against critics of Israel or U.S. foreign policy. Tricia McLaughlin, spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security in the Trump administration, called the suit 'baseless.' 'DHS takes its role in removing threats to the public and our communities seriously, and the idea that enforcing federal law in that regard constitutes some kind of prior restraint on speech is laughable,' McLaughlin said in a statement. She said the United States has 'no room' for 'the rest of the world's terrorist sympathizers.'
Wall Street Journal
28 minutes ago
- Wall Street Journal
WSJ Opinion: Israel Considers Reoccupying Gaza as the Humanitarian Crisis Continues
Israel contemplates reoccupying Gaza, but the move could lead to being responsible for millions of Palestinian lives and the possibility of Hamas returning to power. How can Benjamin Netanyahu raise the pressure on Hamas to accept a deal? Photo: Monica Espitia
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
‘Even in the ghetto we ate something': Holocaust survivors say Gaza hostages endure a ‘second Shoah'
The comments follow the release of multiple Hamas videos showing emaciated hostages. Holocaust survivors interviewed by Israeli outlets on Sunday said the skeletal appearance of Israeli hostages shown in new Hamas videos is akin to what they themselves experienced in Nazi camps, warning that the captives are living through 'a second Holocaust' and demanding immediate government action. Eighty-four-year-old Dina Dega, who survived several concentration camps, toldWalla that the image of 24-year-old hostage Evyatar David 'skin and bones … is exactly what we looked like in the camps... only he is alone and no one comes.' She called the government's inaction 'a second Shoah on Israeli soil.' Miriam Shapiro, 90, said she can no longer stand in the weekly demonstrations at Tel Aviv's Hostages Square but her 'heart is there.' 'My whole family perished in Auschwitz. I will not allow anyone else in this country to be left alone,' she told the site. For 88-year-old Hannah Raanan, the latest footage was unbearable: 'Even in the ghetto we managed to eat something. The hostages look worse.' She accused the government of 'betrayal' and added that the Hamas guards 'are fat from the humanitarian aid while our children collapse.' The Walla report also carried the voice of an unnamed survivor who said, 'The hungry child in the forest still lives inside me. Every hollow face brings her back.' 'Silence is a moral stain' Speaking separately to Ynet, Naftali Fürst, 93, who survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald, said the hollow faces of David and fellow hostage Rom Braslavski 'take me back eighty years.' 'We got a slice of bread and thin soup—sometimes we ate grass. I know the humiliation,' he said, urging Israelis to 'raise our voices—silence is a moral stain.' Dvora Weinstein, who fled burning Serbian villages as a child, said she 'could hardly breathe' on seeing the video: 'For me October 7 was a second Shoah. Our war is just, but the suffering must stop—bring them home before it's too late.' Revital Yakin Krakovsky of the International March of the Living added that the images are a 'direct trigger' for survivors: 'Hunger is hunger, terror is terror, and Jew-hatred has not changed.' Israel believes about 20 hostages are still alive in Gaza nearly 22 months after the October 7 massacres. Families say the latest video proves Hamas is using food deprivation as psychological torture. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told relatives on Sunday that negotiations 'continue relentlessly,' while the Foreign Ministry again demanded Red Cross access. Survivors, however, say time is running out. 'We are living proof life can be rebuilt after the inferno,' Shapiro said, 'but healing, for them and for us, starts only when every hostage is home.'
