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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
Israel security cabinet approves Netanyahu plan to occupy Gaza City
despite rising alarm at home and abroad
By Tal Shalev, Dana Karni, Christian Edwards, Ivana Kottasová, CNN
Updated:
10:31 PM EDT, Thu August 7, 2025
Source: CNN
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 , a move that would
mark a major escalation of the war.
Despite international pressure, 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.
“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
Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a press release.”
The phased plan under consideration would require up to five months,
during which approximately a million Palestinians in Gaza City and
other areas would once again be forced into evacuation areas in
southern Gaza, according to an Israeli official with knowledge of the
proposal. The military would establish compounds to house the massive
influx of .
As part of the plan, Israel and the US would increase the number of aid
distribution sites operated by the controversial Gaza Humanitarian
Foundation (GHF) from the current four up to 16 sites, the official
said.
Netanyahu has not yet presented a detailed plan on how Gaza should be
governed in the future. But speaking to Fox on Thursday, he gave a
hint, saying: “We don’t want to be there as a governing body. We
want to hand it over to Arab forces that will govern it properly
without threatening us and giving Gazans a good life – that’s not
possible with Hamas.”
The operation, which is intended to increase pressure on Hamas and free
the remaining Israeli captives, could be paused if the militant group
returns to negotiations, the official noted.
The last round of talks, which began with marked optimism, collapsed
two weeks ago after the US and Israel pulled their delegations from
Qatar, with US envoy Steve Witkoff accusing Hamas of negotiating “in
bad faith.” Hamas said it is ready to return to the negotiating
table, but only once enough humanitarian aid enters Gaza.
Hamas said Thursday that Netanyahu’s statement ahead of the security
cabinet meeting was “a blatant reversal of the negotiation
process.”
“Netanyahu’s plans to expand aggression confirm beyond a doubt that
he seeks to rid himself of his captives and sacrifice them to serve his
personal interests and his extremist ideological agendas,” the group
said in a statement.
On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump said it was “pretty much up to
Israel” whether to occupy all of Gaza, effectively giving Netanyahu
the green light to proceed however he wants.
The Israeli military says it already controls some 75% of Gaza
following 22 months of war, which has left much of the territory in
ruins and triggered a humanitarian crisis. The expanded operation would
see Israel encircle and potentially enter the few remaining areas in
Gaza that are outside its direct control in an effort to destroy Hamas.
Such a scenario would leave Israel legally responsible for the welfare
of Palestinians in Gaza, which is facing a starvation crisis.
But the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, warned
in a meeting with Netanyahu on Tuesday evening that a full takeover of
Gaza would trap the military within the enclave and put the remaining
hostages at risk, sources told CNN Wednesday.
In a rare public acknowledgement of the disagreements between
Israel’s military and its political leadership, Zamir said on
Thursday, “The culture of debate is an inseparable part of the
history of the Jewish people. We will continue to express our position
without fear – in a professional, independent, and substantive
manner.”
On Thursday, far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich celebrated
Israel’s military operations in Gaza as a means to building Jewish
settlements in the territory once again. Visiting the re-established
settlement of Sa-Nur in the occupied West Bank, Smotrich said Israel
“would one day return to every place we were expelled from.” Using
the biblical term for the northern West Bank, Smotrich said, “That
applies to Gaza, and certainly to Samaria.”
Protests ahead of the vote
Polls have repeatedly shown that the majority of Israelis favor an end
to the war in exchange for the release of the remaining 50 hostages in
Gaza.
Families of the hostages remaining in Gaza blasted the government’s
plan to expand the war.
“Netanyahu is working against the hostages,” said Yehuda Cohen,
whose son Nimrod is still held captive in Gaza. “Netanyahu is working
for murdering the hostages by going and continuing maneuvering in Gaza,
especially in areas where hostages are.”
Cohen and other family members of the hostages sailed towards Gaza’s
maritime border on Thursday, calling for the war to end.
As the flotilla set off from the port of Ashkelon in southern Israel,
Lior Horev from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum told CNN the
sailing was “an SOS call.”
“The decision of the cabinet to prolong the war will be a death
sentence to those alive and will make it impossible to return those who
have been murdered by Hamas and still are held in Gaza,” Horev said.
A large group of protesters gathered in front of the prime minister’s
office in Jerusalem, where the cabinet meeting was taking place.
Family members of some of the hostages wore chunky chains around their
ankles and wrists during a protest in Jerusalem.
“When the plans to escalate fighting were revealed, I wrote, I
called, I begged, and I came here to say - we’re here, let us in and
look us in the eyes and tell us what you’re going to do? Once again
they refused to respond,” Lishay Miran-Lavi said at the protest,
according to the forum. Miran-Lavi’s husband Omri Miran has been held
hostage in Gaza for 22 months.
Another large protest was happening in Tel Aviv as the government was
voting on the plan, while smaller gatherings took place across number
of Israeli towns and cities.
Meanwhile in Kibbutz Nir Oz, a community in southern Israel that was
overrun by Hamas fighters on October 7, 2023, a rebuilding ceremony was
paused in protest at Netanyahu’s plan.
“The Cabinet is now meeting to discuss a future that will be
eternally condemned. It’s time to say — enough!,” representatives
of the kibbutz said in a statement.
Nir Oz was one of the communities hardest hit by the terror attacks,
with one in four of its members either killed or kidnapped. Nine are
still being held hostage in Gaza.
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