Israel’s security cabinet has approved a plan from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to occupy Gaza City. Ahead of the meeting, Netanyahu said Israel intended to take military control of all of Gaza.
The office of Israel’s prime minister said the security cabinet had approved the plan to “defeat Hamas” and the military would prepare to take over Gaza City while ensuring what it described as the “provision of humanitarian aid to the civilian population outside the combat zones.”
The security cabinet voted by a majority to adopt what it called “the five principles for ending the war,” including Israeli security control of Gaza and the establishment of a civilian administration that is neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority.
Israel’s five principles in Gaza
- The disarming of Hamas
- Return of all the hostages – the living and the dead
- The demilitarization of Gaza
- Israeli security control in Gaza
- The establishment of a civil administration that is neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority
It said the “vast majority of cabinet ministers believed that the alternative plan presented in the cabinet would not achieve the defeat of Hamas nor the return of the hostages.” It was not clear which alternate plan the statement was referencing or who submitted it.
Ahead of the cabinet meeting, Netanyahu was asked whether Israel plans to take military control of all of Gaza. “We intend to,” Netanyahu told Fox News. 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.”
Protests in Israel
Protests erupted in multiple Israeli cities ahead of the cabinet vote, and families of the hostages in Gaza blasted the proposed war expansion as a “death sentence.”
Video from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum showed a large group of protesters gathered in front of the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem, where the cabinet gathered. The crowd rallied around a large, unfurled Israeli flag with images of the hostages held in Gaza printed on it, chanting for an end to the war in Gaza and the return of all those who remain in Hamas captivity.
“Escalating the fighting is a death sentence and immediate disappearance for our loved ones – look us in the eyes when you choose to sacrifice them. This is the time, put a comprehensive deal on the table that will bring them all back together – all 50 hostages,” the forum said in a press release.
UN: Humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza
There has been a surge in malnutrition among Gaza’s children, according to the UN, as only a trickle of aid is entering the strip. The UN recorded 11,877 children under five years old as being acutely malnourished in Gaza this July — the highest monthly figure ever recorded, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Of those children, 2,562 suffered from severe acute malnutrition and 40 were hospitalized at stabilization centres, OCHA said.
“This is clear evidence that malnutrition is accelerating rapidly, putting young lives at grave risk,” UNICEF, the UN children’s agency, warned on Thursday.
Israel fully occupied Gaza after capturing it in the 1967 war, but withdrew in 2005. Since the war with Hamas began in 2023, Israel has recaptured large swaths of the territory.
