JERUSALEM—When Israel’s defense minister on Friday threatened to take the Gaza Strip from Hamas piece by piece, he was not just sabre-rattling.
Rather, Israel Katz was describing a war plan that already appeared to be underway. Amid airstrikes across Gaza starting early Tuesday, Israeli ground forces on Wednesday retook much of the Netzarim Corridor in central Gaza and on Thursday entered the cities of Beit Lahiya in the north of the strip and Khan Younis and Rafah in the south, according to military officials.
“If the Hamas terror organization continues to refuse to release the hostages, I have instructed the Israel Defense Forces to capture additional areas, evacuate the population, and expand the security zone around Gaza … through permanent control of the area by Israel,” Katz said in a statement. “The longer Hamas continues its refusal, the more and more land it will lose that will be added to Israel.”
Katz specified that Hamas must release all the remaining 59 hostages in Gaza, 24 of them presumed alive, as part of a temporary U.S.-backed ceasefire agreement. He added that Israel “will intensify the fighting” and expand the ground campaign in Gaza “until the hostages are released and Hamas is defeated” while also advancing President Donald Trump’s idea of a “voluntary transfer” of Gaza’s population abroad.
According to current and former Israeli officials, Katz’s threats are backed by a military plan to conquer Gaza that he and other government leaders first approved two weeks ago and gave the final go-ahead on Monday, ending a two-month ceasefire in the strip. As the Washington Free Beacon first reported, the plan calls for Israel to resume the war with airstrikes and quickly escalate to a ground invasion designed to isolate, starve, and kill Hamas terrorists.
Amir Avivi, a former Israeli brigadier general who has advised Israel’s government and the military during the war, said the “plan is built in stages where Israel is trying to pressure Hamas to release the hostages.”
“We might see two scenarios,” Avivi told the Free Beacon. “Either at a certain stage Hamas is willing to release the hostages, and we’ll see another ceasefire, or Hamas is not willing to negotiate and release the hostages, and this attack will escalate into a full-scale assault on Gaza, which will only end with Israel reaching the goals of the war.”
Current and former officials said that following any ceasefire, Israel would continue with the plan at least until Hamas surrenders.
Hezi Nehama, a former Israeli colonel and co-author of the influential General’s Plan for a staged siege of Gaza, predicted that barring a breakthrough in ongoing U.S.-led hostage-ceasefire talks with Hamas, Israel would launch “the big attack” on Gaza in a week or two, in which case mass conscription of reservists would start in the coming days. Nehama said Israeli leaders were considering deploying as many as six ground divisions to Gaza, far more than at any previous point in the war.
“They spoke about between five and six divisions,” he told the Free Beacon. “It depends on what happens on other fronts, like how Hezbollah reacts in Lebanon for example.”
Early on, Nehama said, troops would take over an area in southwestern Gaza and expand the Al-Mawasi humanitarian zone to accommodate most of Gaza’s some 2 million noncombatants. Entrants would be carefully screened to keep out terrorists, and humanitarian aid would be provided in the area. Israel, which cut off humanitarian aid and electricity to Gaza earlier this month, would lay siege to the rest of the strip while hunting down Hamas terrorists and destroying their infrastructure.
“Hamas still doesn’t understand what’s waiting for them,” said Avivi. “They think we will do something similar to what we did before. They don’t get that it’s game over. They’re going to die—all of them—or surrender.”
The government has yet to make definitive plans for post-war Gaza. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel will retain security control over Gaza indefinitely but will seek to hand over civil administration to local Palestinians not affiliated with terrorist groups. He has expressed hope that Hamas’s defeat will unlock new possibilities, including so-far uncooperative Gulf states’ support for rebuilding and governance of the strip.
Kobi Michael, a former senior Israeli government and military intelligence official, said Israel would likely end up recreating in Gaza a version of the governance structure of the West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority has limited autonomy.
“We will have to elaborate on the ‘mowing the grass’ model in both places, to improve it,” Michael, a researcher at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies and Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, told the Free Beacon, using an Israeli term for long-term management of Palestinian terrorism. “This will be the model for the years to come.”
Israel’s leaders see Trump’s Gaza plan as a potential way to reduce the scale of the challenges in the strip, current and former Israeli officials said. The security cabinet, a government body in charge of urgent wartime decision making, earlier this month voted to form an agency within the Defense Ministry dedicated to the facilitation of Gazan emigration, the sources said. Katz has been in talks with Ofer Winter, a hawkish former brigadier general, about potentially heading the agency.
Amit Halevi, a member of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee from Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, said Katz last week promised to hold a full-government vote on the agency’s formation.
“This work needed to start yesterday. But I think we are finally going in the right direction,” Halevi told the Free Beacon. “For the first time in this war, I am optimistic.”
A spokesman for Katz told the Free Beacon that a cabinet vote on the Gazan emigration agency has not been scheduled. Winter declined to comment, as did spokesmen for the prime minister’s office, the defense ministry, and the Israeli military.
