Israel’s security cabinet has approved a plan to take over Gaza City, Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has said.
Ahead of the Security Cabinet meeting, which began Thursday and ran through the night, Prime Minister Netanyahu said Israel planned to retake control over the entire territory and eventually hand it off to friendly Arab forces opposed to Hamas.
Netanyahu said that “to ensure our security”, Israel planned to remove Hamas and pass Gaza to civilian governance, saying his plan would “liberate the people of Gaza from the awful terror of Hamas.”
However, he told Fox News Israel does “not want to keep it”.
“We want to have a security perimeter. We don’t want to govern it. We don’t want to be there as a governing body,” he said.
Experts say the plan set to be approved today, which is believed to be opposed by parts of the Israeli military, would force more displacement and starvation – and could even see the imposition of Israeli settlers.
It comes after reports surfaced this week that Netanyahu was set to green light plans for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to enter the roughly 25 per cent of Gaza that it does not currently control, including areas where hostages are being held.
But the plan is believed to have faced opposition within the highest ranks of the IDF, due to the dangers posed to Israeli hostages, and the pressure it would place on strained military resources.
Publicly, IDF chief of staff Eyal Zamir said only that his force would execute whatever the Government decided.
Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, removing troops and settlements, but maintained control over the Strip, including imposing a blockade.
The UN, British Government and human rights organisations consider that Israel has been occupying Gaza since 1967.
Should the plan be confirmed, a full occupation could mean anything from short-term military control to the establishment of long-term Israeli settlements, experts said.
Security sources told the Israeli broadcaster Kan that the target of the plan for full occupation was to “push the Gazan population southward, to Mawasi [on the coast] in a relatively short time”.
Meanwhile, Channel 12 reported that the plan would “begin with the conquest of Gaza City” and forcibly expelling its population, with the US expected to help Israel provide “humanitarian” logistics and “temporary civilian infrastructure”.
The sources estimated that it would take five months for ground forces to fully invade and hold Gaza City and central areas.
Palestinians walk through Shujaiyya, one of the largest and oldest neighborhoods in eastern Gaza City, which has been almost completely destroyed following months of Israeli attacks, on 3 August 2025. (Photo: Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu via Getty Images)Dr Ahron Bregman, an academic at King’s College London (KCL) who served for six years in the Israeli army, said a full occupation would likely take several months and involve further displacement of people.
Around 90 per cent of Gaza’s population has already been displaced, according to the UN.
“What the Israelis will probably try to do is to relocate the population, move them from place to place, so there’ll be a terrible suffering in terms of people having to leave their tents and go elsewhere,” he said.
Dr Robert Geist Pinfold, an international security lecturer at KCL, said that the plan would be likely to lead to further deaths from starvation and put hostages at risk from friendly fire or Hamas attacks.
Israel imposed a total blockade of aid deliveries to Gaza in early March before resuming its attacks on the Strip, ending a two-month ceasefire with Hamas.
It partially eased the blockade two months later, but the UN’s humanitarian chief said it was still only permitting “a drop in the ocean of what is urgently needed”.
Plans could pave way for settlers in Gaza
Several experts said that the operation could mark the start of a new long-term system in Gaza.
Far-right Israeli politicians, including the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, have called for Palestinians to be displaced from Gaza to allow for its resettlement by Israel.
A group of far-right politicians and settlers discussed a plan, called “The master plan for settlement in the Gaza Strip”, last month.
Crowds form as Palestinians, including children, line up to receive food distributed by a charity (Photo: Abdalhkem Abu Riash/Anadolu via Getty Images)Smotrich recently said of the idea of Israeli settlers’ returning to Gaza: “It’s real. For 20 years we called it wishful thinking. It seems to me it is now a real working plan.”
Omar Shakir, Israel Palestine director for Human Rights Watch, said the plan could see the prolonged presence of ground troops, the imposition of additional checkpoints and movement restrictions, as in the West Bank.
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It could also be “code for building settlements” as in the West Bank, which have been deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice.
Professor Yossi Mekelberg, senior consulting fellow at Chatham House, said that the new plan could mark the start of “the most extreme version” of Israeli war aims in Gaza, influenced by ultranationalists, “of occupying Gaza, rebuilding it at some point, and – not beyond the realm of possibility – implementing a plan of expelling maybe hundreds of thousands of people, maybe the entire population”.
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