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Israeli forces will seize “large areas” of Gaza and turn them into buffer zones, Israel’s defence minister said on Wednesday, as the military expanded its renewed offensive in the Palestinian enclave.
The announcement marks the latest intensification of Israeli operations in Gaza since Israel broke a two-month ceasefire with Hamas last month and cut off supplies of food, fuel, humanitarian aid and medicine to the 2.2mn people living in the shattered territory.
Israel has already turned large tracts of land along Gaza’s border with the country into buffer zones, as well as creating a similar area in the Netzarim corridor, which runs through the centre of the strip, separating its north and south.
In his statement on Wednesday, defence minister Israel Katz gave no details of where or how large the new land seizures would be. But he said the renewed fighting would be accompanied a “large-scale” evacuation of Gaza’s population from combat areas.
He also repeated his previous calls for Palestinians in Gaza to turn against militant group Hamas and release Israeli hostages still being held there, saying this was the “only way to end the war”.
The announcement was met with dismay by relatives of the hostages, with the organisation representing them issuing a statement accusing Katz of “sacrificing the hostages for seizing territory”.
“Instead of freeing the hostages through a deal and ending the war, the Israeli government is sending more troops into Gaza, to fight in the same places where they have already fought time and time again,” said the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.
Katz’s statement came two days after Israel issued an evacuation order for the southern town of Rafah, which lies near the border between Gaza and Egypt, forcing tens of thousands of people to flee.
Palestinian media reported on Wednesday that Israeli forces had carried out a heavy bombardment of the area overnight, and that Israeli forces had advanced into the centre and east of Rafah.
Israeli officials insist the renewed offensive is the only way to force the release of the 59 hostages — fewer than half of whom are still thought to be alive — that Hamas continues to hold in Gaza.
But UN officials and aid groups have warned that the renewed fighting and Israel’s accompanying siege of Gaza have intensified the already catastrophic humanitarian conditions in the enclave.
On Tuesday, the World Food Programme said the 25 bakeries it supported in Gaza had all been forced to shut down because of a lack of fuel and flour, and warned that its remaining supplies of hot meals in the territory would last for a maximum of two weeks.
Israel’s offensive has now killed more than 50,000 people in Gaza, according to Palestinian officials, as well as displacing most of its population — many of them multiple times — and reducing much of the strip to uninhabitable rubble.
Israel launched the offensive in response to Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack on Israel, during which militants killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials, and took 250 hostage.
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