November 8, 2025
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel’s defense minister warned Friday that Gaza’s largest city could be destroyed unless Hamas terrorists yield to his country's terms.
A day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would authorize the military to mount a major operation to seize Gaza City, Defense Minister Israel Katz warned that it could “turn into Rafah and Beit Hanoun,” areas largely reduced to rubble earlier in the war.
“The gates of hell will soon open on the heads of Hamas’ murderers and rapists in Gaza — until they agree to Israel’s conditions for ending the war,” Katz wrote in a post on X.
He restated Israel’s ceasefire demands: the release of all hostages and Hamas’ complete disarmament.
U.S. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, expressed frustration with Hamas’ stance in long-running ceasefire talks, suggesting the terror group was less interested in making deals to release hostages with so few left alive in captivity.
“The situation has to end. It’s extortion, and it has to end," Trump told reporters Friday. "And we’ll see what happens. I actually think (the hostages are) safer in many ways if you went in and you really went in fast and you did it.”
Netanyahu on Thursday said he had instructed officials “to begin immediate negotiations” to release hostages and end the war on Israel's terms. It was not immediately clear if that meant Israel would return to long-running talks mediated by Egypt and Qatar after Hamas said earlier this week that it accepted a new proposal from the mediators.
With ground troops already active in strategic areas, the wide-scale operation in Gaza City could start within days.
Israel says Gaza City is still a Hamas stronghold, with a network of tunnels, after several previous large-scale raids. The city is also home to hundreds of thousands of civilians, some of whom have fled from other areas, and it contains some of the territory's critical infrastructure and health facilities.
Israel could also accept the latest ceasefire proposal, which would forestall the offensive. The proposal calls for a phased deal involving hostage and prisoner exchanges and a pullback of Israeli troops, while talks continue on a longer-term cease-fire.
Many Israelis fear an assault could doom the roughly 20 hostages who have survived captivity since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack. Aid groups and international leaders warn that renewed fighting would worsen Gaza’s humanitarian crisis.
Netanyahu has argued that the offensive is the surest way to free captives and crush Hamas.
“These two things — defeating Hamas and releasing all our hostages — go hand in hand,” Netanyahu said Thursday while touring a command center in southern Israel.
Since 251 people were taken hostage more than 22 months ago, ceasefire agreements and other deals have accounted for the vast majority of the 148 who were released, including the bodies of eight dead hostages.
Israel has managed to rescue only eight hostages alive and to retrieve the bodies of 49 others. Fifty hostages remain in Gaza, about 20 of whom Israel believes to be alive.
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