Israeli report: Netanyahu moving to expand war on Gaza Strip
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to order an expansion of the ongoing onslaught on the besieged Gaza Strip, Hebrew-language Maariv days says.
Netanyahu is expected to convene a war cabinet meeting on Friday for a situation assessment, the Israeli newspaper reported on Thursday.
The meeting, which includes senior generals and minister of military affairs Israel Katz, is expected to approve a plan to expand and intensify the Israeli onslaught across the war-wracked territory, it added.
Israel has already expanded its ground aggression in the besieged Gaza Strip, seeking to seize a large portion of the Palestinian territory.
The regime intensified its onslaught last month, with Katz announcing plans to “capture extensive territory” to establish what new “security zones”.
Critics say the Israeli regime “is sending more soldiers into Gaza to fight in the same areas where battles have already taken place repeatedly.”
The regime has already rejected a deal proposed by the Hamas resistance movement that would have involved the release of all Israeli captives held in Gaza in return for ending the war.
Hamas says it is willing to engage in comprehensive negotiations that would secure the release of all Israeli captives in exchange for a full ceasefire, Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, reconstruction efforts, and the lifting of the siege.
The families of Israeli captives, as well as several Israeli opposition groups, are pressuring Netanyahu to accept the agreement.
They have accused Netanyahu of abandoning the captives in favor of prolonging the war for his political survival.
In recent weeks, thousands of Israeli reservists have signed letters demanding that Netanyahu’s regime stop the war in the besieged strip.
New Israeli strikes kill dozens in Gaza
Gaza’s civil defense agency said Thursday Israeli bombardments had killed at least 29 people since midnight in the war-ravaged territory.
Civil defense official Mohammed Al-Mughayyir said the toll included eight people killed in an airstrike on the Abu Sahlul family home in Khan Yunis refugee camp in southern Gaza.
Four people were killed in an airstrike east of Shaaf in Gaza City’s al-Tuffah neighborhood.
At least 17 more were killed in other attacks across the besieged Palestinian territory, including one that hit a tent sheltering displaced people near the central city of Deir el-Balah, the agency said.
Images showed residents digging through rubble in search of bodies, which were carried away on stretchers under blankets.
At Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, rescuers rushed a screaming wounded child out of an ambulance.
Israel resumed its brutal campaign in the Gaza Strip on March 18, unilaterally breaching a two-month truce.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Thursday that at least 2,326 people have been killed since Israel resumed strikes.
More than 52,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, most of them women and children.
In November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and the former Israeli minister for military affairs, Yoav Gallant, for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on Gaza.
