Netanyahu announces plans to occupy Gaza despite pushback

Netanyahu announces intention to reoccupy all of the Gaza Strip, despite pushback from Israel’s military leadership and hostage families who fear a “death sentence” for their loved ones.

Earlier today, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Israel’s intention to fully reoccupy the Gaza Strip, where it has been carrying out a 22 month military assault that international experts and even Israeli human rights groups have called a genocide. Israel fully occupied Gaza from 1967 to 2005, when it withdrew its forces to control Gaza’s borders. Netanyahu claimed that the intent is not to keep Gaza indefinitely, but to hand it over to some Arab authority once Hamas has been eliminated. President Trump has apparently given his seal of approval to Netanyahu’s plans.

In Gaza, where a minimum of 60,000 people have been killed by direct violence from Israel, a hunger crisis is deepening due to Israel’s stranglehold on aid entering the Strip. An escalated military campaign would certainly worsen the epidemic of hunger and directly threaten the lives of the Palestinians who are left, most of whom are concentrated in the western part of Gaza City in the center of the Strip. It would also undoubtedly endanger the lives of the remaining 20 or so Israeli hostages who are believed to still be alive.

Largely due to the latter consideration, there has been strong pushback in Israel against Netanyahu’s plan to reoccupy the Strip. Families of the remaining hostages have led protests outside of the Prime Minister’s office this evening, where Netanyahu is meeting with his security cabinet to discuss whether and how to move forward with the plan. Israel’s security and military establishment have also come out strongly against the plan, both because it would endanger hostages and because it would pose even greater risk to Israel’s military forces in the Strip.

The security cabinet meeting which began earlier this evening is still going on many hours later, well into the wee hours of Friday morning in Israel. At this moment, there’s no way of knowing whether this means the discussion has not gone Netanyahu’s way, or whether the cabinet has approved the plan and is discussing how to move forward with it. Satellite images appear to show movement and a build-up of forces which looks like a prelude to a major ground operation.