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Israel will begin annexing parts of Gaza if Hamas does not release the remaining hostages held in the strip, the country’s defence minister warned.
Israel Katz said on Friday that the Israel Defense Forces would “seize additional territories [in Gaza], while evacuating the population” if Hamas did not agree to revised terms of a hostage-for-ceasefire deal.
“The more Hamas continues its refusal, the more territory it will lose and be annexed to Israel,” Katz added, threatening to expand border “security zones” and bring them under “permanent Israeli control”.
Israeli forces on Friday pushed ahead with a new ground offensive in the enclave, days after launching a ferocious air campaign that shattered a two-month-old, US-brokered ceasefire.
More than 500 Palestinians have been killed so far, according to local health authorities, and the Israeli military has issued repeated evacuation orders for tens of thousands of people living in border areas. The IDF says it has killed several senior Hamas political officials.
The original multiphase ceasefire deal was meant to enter a second stage this month, in which Israeli troops would withdraw from the strip and Hamas would release the remaining hostages in return for a permanent end to the 17-month war.
Israel, with the support of President Donald Trump’s administration, had instead demanded Hamas release more of the remaining 59 hostages seized by the militants during their October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel without agreeing to end the war. Less than half the hostages are believed to still be alive.
Katz on Friday appeared to harden the terms, demanding Hamas “release all the hostages, both living and dead, in advance and in two stages, with a ceasefire in between”.
US national security adviser Mike Waltz a day earlier appeared to echo the new demands, writing on social media platform X: “The ceasefire would have been extended if Hamas released all remaining hostages. Instead, they chose war.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who under pressure from his far-right political allies has refused to permanently halt the war, vowed to increase the military pressure on Hamas and “destroy” the militant group.
Israel earlier this month stopped the flow of humanitarian aid and severed the last remaining electricity line into the besieged territory.
Katz threatened to continue ratcheting up the pressure, both military and civilian, against Hamas, including threatening the large-scale evacuation of the Gazan population to the enclave’s south and “implementing . . . Trump’s voluntary transfer plan for the residents of Gaza”.
The US president last month floated the idea of transferring the majority of Gaza’s 2.2mn people out of the shattered territory and turn the enclave into the “Riviera of the Middle East”.
The proposal was widely condemned across the world, and Trump has since appeared to distance himself from the idea. Netanyahu, however, has called it “bold” and “revolutionary”, and has vowed to move ahead with it.
Israel’s military offensive has killed more than 49,000 Palestinians, according to local officials, as well as reducing most of Gaza to rubble and fuelling a humanitarian crisis in the enclave.
Israel began its campaign in response to Hamas’s October 7 attack, in which militants killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials, and took another 250 hostage.
Cartography by Jana Tauschinski
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