Israel's security cabinet has approved plans to take over Gaza City in the north of the enclave. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office announced the plans after senior security cabinet officials convened for hours late on Thursday and into the early hours of Friday to debate the controversial issue. The decision marks another significant escalation in Israel's 22-month long military offensive on the Strip, which has already killed at least 61,258 Palestinians, accoridng to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. The gruelling war has also internally displaced Gaza's 2 million population, many several times, reduced the territory to rubble, with the UN estimating that more than 60% of buildings and critical infrastructure having been destroyed, and pushed most Gazans towards famine. Earlier on Thursday, Netanyahu denied Israel had any intentions of permanently controlling Gaza. "We don't want to keep it. We want to have a security perimeter," he told Fox News before the security cabinet session. "We don't want to govern it. We don't want to be there as a governing body." He said that Israel intended to hand over the Strip to a coalition of Arab forces that would govern it. Netanyahu insisted that the full takeover of Gaza is necessary to eliminate Hamas. In a statement, Hamas slammed Netanyahu's remarks about full military control of Gaza, calling it "a coup" as faltering ceasefire negotiations continue. Israel's Channel 12 had previously reported that US President Donald Trump did not oppose Netanyahu's plans to seize all of the Gaza Strip, but the outlet said on Thursday that a senior US official had confirmed that the Trump administration does not support Israel annexing the territory. Crucially the idea of full military control of Gaza exposed a rift between the IDF and the government, with Chief of the General Staff Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir warning earlier on Thursday that the plan would endanger the lives of the hostages and further stretch the military. Zamir has repeatedly clashed with the security cabinet in recent days, notably over the Gaza proposal. That prompted Netanyahu to say in a post on X that if he objected to the plans, he could resign. "We are not dealing with theory; we are dealing with matters of life and death, with the defence of the state, and we do so while looking directly into the eyes of our soldiers and the citizens of the country," Zamir said, who claimed the IDF is "now approaching the final stages" of the war against Hamas. "We intend to defeat and collapse Hamas. We will continue to act with our hostages in mind, and we will do everything to bring them home," Zamir said. Concerns that an expanded offensive could put the lives of the remaining hostages at risk have also been expressed by their families in Israel. On Thursday morning, almost two dozen relatives of hostages set sail from southern Israel towards the maritime border with Gaza, where they broadcast messages from loudspeakers on boats to their relatives in the Strip, denouncing Netanyahu's plan to expand military operations. And Israelis staged protests in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, fearing any military escalation in Gaza would doom their loved ones. Yehuda Cohen, the father of Nimrod Cohen, an Israeli soldier held hostage in Gaza, said from the boat that Netanyahu is prolonging the war to satisfy extremists in his government and to prevent it from collapsing. "Netanyahu is working only for himself," he said, pleading with the international community to put pressure on Netanyahu to stop the war and save his son. — Euronews
