Tel Aviv, Aug 8: Israel’s security cabinet has approved a plan from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to occupy Gaza City, the Prime Minister’s Office said Friday.
“The IDF (Israel Defense Forces) will prepare for the takeover of Gaza City while ensuring the provision of humanitarian aid to the civilian population outside the combat zones,” the office said following a hours-long meeting of the security cabinet that went long into the night.
Mass protests erupted across Israel as the country’s security cabinet was meeting to decide on a full reoccupation of Gaza, a move that would mark a major escalation of the war.
Despite international pressure, opposition from the Israeli military and domestic fears the operation will endanger hostages, Netanyahu has pushed for a complete takeover of the besieged enclave nearly two years into the war.
Details of the plan remain unclear but the Prime Minister’s Office said “an overwhelming majority of cabinet ministers believed that the alternative plan presented would neither achieve Hamas’s defeat nor bring back the hostages.”
In an interview with Fox News shortly before the security cabinet meeting, Netanyahu was asked whether Israel plans to take military control of all of Gaza.
“We intend to,” Netanyahu said. He claimed Israel is aiming to “remove Hamas” in Gaza, before handing the territory to “civilian governance that is not Hamas, and not anyone advocating the destruction of Israel.”
The prime minister’s comments drew a strong response from Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid. “What Netanyahu is offering is more war, more dead hostages, more ‘now cleared for publication’ notices, and tens of billions of taxpayer shekels poured into the delusions of (Itamar) Ben Gvir and (Bezalel) Smotrich,” Lapid said, referring to Israel’s far-right ministers, who have repeatedly pushed for maximalist goals in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Families of some of the 50 hostages who are still in Gaza organized several protests on Thursday, pleading with the government to drop the plan.
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