{"id":471656,"date":"2026-05-28T17:44:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T17:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/471656\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T17:44:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T17:44:08","slug":"netanyahu-orders-army-to-take-control-of-70-of-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/471656\/","title":{"rendered":"Netanyahu orders army to take control of 70% of Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had ordered the country’s military to take control of 70% of Gaza, in defiance of the terms of a fragile ceasefire that took effect in October.<\/p>\n

“We are currently squeezing Hamas. We now control 60% of the territory in the strip,” he said at a conference in an occupied West Bank settlement, according to a video aired by Israel’s Channel 12 network.<\/p>\n

He said the military had controlled 50% of Gaza under the terms of the ceasefire, adding: “My directive is to move to… 70%”.<\/p>\n

“We’re squeezing them from all (sides). We’ll deal with what’s left afterwards.”<\/p>\n

The first phase of the truce saw the last hostages seized in Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attacks on Israel, which triggered the war, released in exchange for Palestinians detained by Israel.<\/p>\n

The transition to the second phase, which was supposed to involve Hamas’s disarmament and a gradual withdrawal of the Israeli army, has been stalled for months.<\/p>\n

Under the terms of the ceasefire, Israeli forces were to pull back behind a so-called “yellow line”, a demarcation between the area under Hamas control and that held by the Israeli army.<\/p>\n

Mr Netanyahu announced on 15 May that the Israeli army had expanded its grip on Gaza.<\/p>\n

“There were those who said: get out, get out. We did not get out. Today we control… how much? 60%. Tomorrow we shall see,” he said at the time.<\/p>\n

Read the latest Middle East stories<\/a><\/p>\n

Gaza remains gripped by daily violence, with both the Israeli military and Hamas accusing one another of violating the truce in effect since 10 October.<\/p>\n

Israel has killed more than 900 people since the ceasefire, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which operates under Hamas authority and whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.<\/p>\n

Israel said yesterday it had killed the new head of Hamas’s armed wing in Gaza, Mohammed Odeh, after killing his predecessor earlier this month.<\/p>\n

Since Hamas’s October 2023 attack, Israel has systematically targeted the group’s leaders, both in Gaza and across the region.<\/p>\n

Mr Odeh is the fourth head of the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades that Israel says it has killed since the start of the Gaza war.<\/p>\n

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz yesterday repeated Israel’s goal of ending Hamas’s rule over the Palestinian territory and alluded to a plan for the forced displacement of its residents.<\/p>\n

“The plan for voluntary migration from Gaza will also be implemented – everything will be done at the right time and in the right way,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had ordered the country’s military to take control of 70% of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-471656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}