October 1, 2026
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israel said early Friday that it plans to take over Gaza City. The decision came after a late-night meeting of top officials.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had earlier outlined more sweeping plans in an interview with Fox News, saying Israel planned to take control of all of Gaza. Israel already controls around three-quarters of the territory.
The final decision, which came after Israel's Security Cabinet met through the night, stopped short of that, and may be aimed in part at pressuring the terrorist group Hamas to accept a ceasefire on Israel's terms.
It may also reflect the reservations of Israel’s top general, who reportedly warned that it would endanger the remaining 20 or so living hostages held by Hamas terrorists and further strain Israel’s army after nearly two years of regional wars.
The military “will prepare to take control of Gaza City while providing humanitarian aid to the civilian population outside the combat zones,” Netanyahu's office said in a statement after the meeting.
Israel has repeatedly bombarded Gaza City and carried out numerous raids there, only to return to different neighborhoods again and again as militants regrouped. Today, it is one of the few areas of Gaza that hasn’t been turned into an Israeli buffer zone or placed under evacuation orders.
It’s unclear how many people reside in the city, which was Gaza’s largest before the war. Hundreds of thousands fled Gaza City under evacuation orders in the opening weeks of the war, but many returned during a ceasefire at the start of this year.
Asked in the interview with Fox News ahead of the Security Cabinet meeting if Israel would “take control of all of Gaza,” Netanyahu replied: “We intend to, in order to assure our security, remove Hamas (from) there.”
"We don’t want to keep it. We want to have a security perimeter,” Netanyahu said in the interview. “We want to hand it over to Arab forces that will govern it properly without threatening us and giving Gazans a good life.”
Israel's military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, warned against occupying Gaza, saying it would endanger the hostages and put further strain on the military after nearly two years of war, according to Israeli media reports on the closed-door Security Cabinet meeting.
Hamas-led terrorists abducted 251 people and killed around 1,200 in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that triggered the war. Most of the hostages have been released in ceasefires or other deals, but 50 remain inside Gaza, around 20 of them believed by Israel to be alive.
Israel's military offensive has killed over 61,000 Palestinians, according to claims by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, which does not say how many were fighters or civilians.
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