Israel's Security Cabinet approves plan to take over Gaza City: statement

JERUSALEM - Israel's Security Cabinet has approved a plan to take over Gaza City, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said in a statement on Friday.

The Israel Defense Forces will prepare for the takeover while distributing humanitarian assistance to civilians outside the combat zones, according to the statement.

With a majority vote, the cabinet adopted the five principles for "concluding the war": the disarming of Hamas; the return of all the hostages, both the living and the deceased; the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip; Israeli security control in the Gaza Strip; and the establishment of an alternative civil administration that is neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority.

A decisive majority of Security Cabinet ministers believed that the alternative plan that had been submitted to the cabinet would neither achieve the defeat of Hamas nor the return of the hostages.

According to the Times of Israel, the statement did not elaborate on the plan but appeared to refer to a proposal by military chief Eyal Zamir, who opposes occupying the Gaza Strip, citing concerns over a humanitarian disaster and the safety of hostages.

Israel intended to take control of all of Gaza to "assure our security, remove Hamas there, enable the population to be free of Gaza," Netanyahu said on Thursday in an interview with Fox News ahead of the cabinet meeting.

"We don't want to keep it. We want to have a security perimeter. We want to hand it over to Arab forces that will govern it properly without threatening us and giving Gazans a good life," he said.

In response, Hamas said in a statement that it considers Netanyahu's statements to represent "a clear reversal of the course of negotiations and reveal the true motives behind his withdrawal from the final round."

At least 9,752 Palestinians have been killed and 40,004 others injured since Israel renewed its intensive strikes in Gaza on March 18, bringing the total death toll since October 2023 to 61,258, and injuries to 152,045, Gaza-based health authorities said Thursday.