The Occupation
Netanyahu’s cabinet decides: Israel will take over full control of Gaza City, per a cabinet vote, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced today. This comes after news broke yesterday that the Israeli military will also start a complete occupation of Gaza in order to stamp out Hamas, with the end goal being to surrender the territory to “Arab forces that will govern it properly without threatening us,” in Netanyahu’s words. This means the 800,000 to 1 million Palestinians who still reside there will be evacuated south, with a deadline of October 7 of this year.
At the beginning of the war, which started after Hamas’ October 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel, the Israel Defense Forces captured most of Gaza City before later giving it up again under the assumption, which turned out to be false, that Hamas had been eradicated in those areas. Currently, Israel controls about three-quarters of the Gaza Strip.
Other countries have responded with sharp rebukes. Germany said this morning that it would no longer supply arms to Israel over the Gaza occupation plan. Officials from Belgium, Norway, and the U.K. have already voiced condemnation.
And “mediators from Egypt and Qatar are working on a new framework which will include the release of all hostages—dead and alive—in one go in return for an end of the war in Gaza and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the strip,” per two Arab officials, according to The Times of Israel. In some sense, this could have been Israel’s plan all along.
“The threat of a full occupation could be part of a strategy to try to force the group into making concessions in stalled ceasefire talks,” notes the BBC. “Israeli leaders say Hamas, for now, is not interested in negotiating as, in their view, the group is feeling emboldened, a view that seems to be shared by the Trump administr
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