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Israel is threatening to expand its military offensive into additional areas of Gaza in a bid to increase pressure on Hamas and force the militant group to release the remaining Israeli hostages it still holds.
An Israeli official said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government was “in dialogue” with the administration of US President Donald Trump over the controversial proposal.
It is likely to only increase global condemnation of Israel, whose offensive has killed more than 60,000 people, according to local officials. Israeli restrictions on aid have also tipped the enclave of 2.1mn into what international monitors say is an “unfolding” famine.
“The understanding is forming that Hamas is not interested in a deal, and therefore the prime minister is pushing for the release of the hostages [while also moving to] a military decision,” the official said on Sunday night.
This would be “combined with the introduction of humanitarian aid to areas outside the fighting zones and, to the extent possible, to areas outside Hamas control”.
Talks over a 60-day truce collapsed last month after the US and Israel recalled their negotiators from Doha and accused Hamas of increasing its demands regarding the scope of Israel’s military withdrawal from Gaza and the number of Palestinian prisoners to be released from Israeli jails.
Hamas, for its part, has consistently said it wants guarantees that any deal leads to an end to the war, something Netanyahu has refused.
Since negotiations broke down, Netanyahu’s government has discussed expanding the military offensive into Gaza City and the central region of the strip, to where most of the territory’s population has been forcibly evacuated.
The Israeli military currently controls about 75 per cent of Gaza, much of it reduced to rubble. An expanded offensive in the territory’s remaining population centres would probably take a severe toll on civilians and force hundreds of thousands to evacuate again.
Smoke rises following an Israeli air strike in the northern Gaza Strip © Atef Safadi/EPA/Shutterstock
A second Israeli official said that no formal decision about Israel’s next steps had been made, with Netanyahu’s security cabinet set to meet on Tuesday.
The official said the statements were also meant to heap pressure on Hamas to return to negotiations. Israeli and US officials last week indicated they were no longer seeking a temporary ceasefire but rather a full deal to return all the hostages and force Hamas to disarm.
US special envoy Steve Witkoff, on a visit to Israel last week, told relatives of Israeli hostages that the goal was now an “all or nothing” deal to secure the release of the remaining 50 hostages, 20 of whom are believed to be alive.
According to a leaked recording of the conversation, the US envoy claimed that Hamas was “ready to demilitarise” as part of a deal to end the war — a claim the Palestinian militant group has rejected.
Steve Witkoff on a visit to a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation food and aid distribution site last week © US Embassy in Jerusalem/AFP/Getty Images
The Israeli public is still reeling from the release of several videos last week by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a smaller militant group, that showed two starved and emaciated Israel hostages — Evyatar David and Rom Braslavski — being held in tunnels in Gaza.
Netanyahu said in a recorded message on Sunday night that he, like the rest of the nation, was “shocked” by the images, which he compared to Nazi treatment of Jews during the Holocaust.
“When I see this, I understand exactly what Hamas wants. It does not want a deal. It wants to break us through these horror videos,” Netanyahu said.
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Hamas declared that the hostages “eat what we eat”, interspersing one of the videos with images of what they claimed were starving babies and children in Gaza. The militant group seized some 250 hostages during its October 7 2023 attack on Israel, in which it killed 1,200 people, according to officials.
Relatives of the hostages, in a statement of their own, said the videos showed that their loved ones in captivity were nearing death and had no more time left, and again demanded that the Israeli government agree a “comprehensive deal that will bring all the hostages home and end this war”.
“We are gravely concerned by reports of an expansion of the fighting in Gaza, which puts the hostages’ lives in even greater danger,” they added.