Israel prepares for Gaza City offensive as 60,000 reservists called up

Times

7 hours ago

Thousands of Palestinians were told to leave their homes near Gaza City on Wednesday as Israel called up 60,000 reservists for a new ground offensive.
The first evacuation orders in nearly two months were issued for Jabaliya, a densely packed refugee camp in northern Gaza, as Israeli jets dropped leaflets advising residents to move south.
'To mitigate the risk of harm to civilians — the civilian population currently located in the active combat zone has been warned and allowed to move south for their safety,' the Israel Defence Forces said after officials announced a 'new phase of combat' in the Strip.
Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli airstrikes and gunfire killed at least 25 people across the territory on Wednesday, with the army already operating in the Jabaliya and Zeitoun suburbs of Gaza City.
Israel Katz, the Israeli defence minister, approved a plan by the IDF to capture Gaza City, home to nearly half of the Strip's 2.3 million residents, which will entail the mobilisation of more than 100,000 troops, including reservists, over the next month.
'Once the operation is completed, Gaza will change its face and will no longer look as it did in the past,' Katz said.
The plan, to be submitted for final approval by the security cabinet on Thursday, will put the majority of Gaza under Israeli military occupation indefinitely, even as Egypt and Qatar have been trying to broker a ceasefire in the war with Hamas.
'This is a new phase of combat,' an IDF official said. 'We are going into Hamas's main military and governing stronghold, into new areas where Hamas holds military capabilities, as we've seen in recent days, in order to bring the hostages home and defeat Hamas.'
This week the militant group, which started the war with its attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, agreed to a proposed 60-day truce in exchange for releasing about half the Israeli hostages it still holds, the freeing of some Palestinian prisoners by Israel, and facilitating more aid into Gaza.
Late on Wednesday, Netanyahu's office issued a statement on the operation before its security cabinet approval, saying the prime minister had 'shortened' the timetables to seize control of Gaza City.
'[Binyamin] Netanyahu has directed that the timetables — for seizing control of the last terrorist strongholds and the defeat of Hamas — be shortened' — in an apparent shun to Hamas's acceptance of the ceasefire proposal last month, adding that Netanyahu greatly appreciated the fighters who have been mobilised.
Mediators in Cairo and Doha are waiting for Israel's formal response but Binyamin Netanyahu, the country's prime minister, signalled that he is only interested in a deal that releases all the hostages.
Mustafa Qazzaat, head of the emergency committee in the Gaza municipality, described the situation on the ground as 'catastrophic'. He said that 'large numbers' of people were fleeing their neighbourhoods, with the majority of those displaced 'on the roads and streets without shelter'.
Israeli soldiers in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza, fought off an attack on Wednesday by Hamas fighters who emerged from tunnels and opened fire with machineguns and rocket-propelled grenades. The IDF returned fire and ordered a drone strike on the group of at least 18 gunmen, killing ten, the military said.
The IDF's new operation proposes an encirclement of Gaza City and predicts close-quarters fighting with two brigades of Hamas militants thought to be inside the city and the heavily built-up central refugee camps.
Palestinians flee after attacks on the Zeitoun area
AHMED JIHAD IBRAHIM AL-ARINI/GETTY IMAGES
The military plans to evacuate up to one million civilians via so-called 'safe routes' from Gaza City towards al-Mawasi in Rafah, although many Palestinians insist they will not leave. Israel has also allowed tents into southern Gaza for the first time in the war and plans to construct two additional field hospitals and four extra aid distribution centres to cope with refugees.
Plans for the new offensive have been condemned by critics of Israel's military campaign at home and abroad.
President Macron, who has vowed to recognise a Palestinian state at next month's UN general assembly, said that the new offensive 'can only lead to a complete disaster for both peoples'.
Israel 'will drag the region into a permanent war', the French president posted on social media, reiterating his call for an 'international stabilisation mission' to keep the peace in Gaza.
Macron also promised to host, with Saudi Arabia, a summit in New York next month to revive discussions around the two-state solution, which has been rejected by Netanyahu.
Binyamin Netanyahu
ABIR SULTAN/EPA
The hostage families forum, a campaign group for relatives of those held captive since the October 7 attacks, also called for an emergency meeting with Katz after he approved the operation, codenamed Gideon's Chariots 2.
'Approving plans to occupy Gaza, while there is a deal on the table for Netanyahu's approval, is … a stab to the heart of the families,' the group said, adding that 'the plan that should have been approved last night is the plan to return every last hostage'.
Some reservists have also shown signs of dissent and fatigue towards an expansion of the war. A large section of society, the Ultra-Orthodox, has also failed to enlist, putting a strain on reservists amid a shortage of soldiers.
'Sending troops to die for a political fantasy that even the military leadership doesn't believe in is a betrayal of the public and of the soldiers who have sacrificed so much,' said Yotam Vilk, a reservist who opposes the operation, referring to the IDF chief of staff's previously reported objections to the plan.
'What happens after Gaza City is captured? Will we impose indefinite military rule? Build mass detention camps in violation of Israel's obligations under the genocide convention? Without a political vision, without readiness to make a deal — what future is left for Israel? For the hostages still trapped underground? For the countless Palestinians who will continue to suffer and die?
'Every soldier who loves this country must understand: it's time to stop enabling this. The war must end, the hostages must come home, and only a full agreement will get us there.'
Israel's cabinet has not convened a security meeting to discuss the latest ceasefire proposal. Instead, hardline elements of the government are moving forward with plans to expand settlement building in the West Bank that would divide land identified as key to a future Palestinian state, cutting it off from East Jerusalem and separating the north and the southern West Bank.
On Wednesday, Israel approved the construction plan for the so-called E1 area, which had been delayed for decades in the face of international objections.
David Lammy, the British foreign secretary, said that if the settlement plan was implemented it would constitute a 'flagrant breach of international law and critically undermine the two-state solution'.
Bezalel Smotrich, Israel's far-right finance minister, said: 'The Palestinian state is being erased — not with slogans, but with actions.' He has promised to end the prospect of a two-state solution.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the security minister, visited Palestinian prisoners in an Israeli prison to show them a large black-and-white poster of Gaza in ruins due to Israeli bombing.
Itamar Ben-Gvir with the poster of Gaza in ruins
'This is how it's supposed to look,' Ben Gvir, who runs Israel's prisons and police, said of the devastation in a video posted to his Telegram account. One Palestinian inmate recognised his destroyed home in the photo, he added.
'This is what they see every morning when they go out to the courtyard,' Ben-Gvir said.
Both Smotrich, of the Religious Zionism party, and Ben-Gvir, of the Jewish Power party, have threatened to bring down Netanyahu's coalition government if he agrees to a ceasefire deal, although parliament is on a summer break. Both ministers were sanctioned by Britain in June over their incitement to violence against Palestinians.