The Occupation

Netanyahu’s cabinet decides: Israel will take over full control of Gaza City, per a cabinet vote, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced today. This comes after news broke yesterday that the Israeli military will also start a complete occupation of Gaza in order to stamp out Hamas, with the end goal being to surrender the territory to “Arab forces that will govern it properly without threatening us,” in Netanyahu’s words. This means the 800,000 to 1 million Palestinians who still reside there will be evacuated south, with a deadline of October 7 of this year.

At the beginning of the war, which started after Hamas’ October 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel, the Israel Defense Forces captured most of Gaza City before later giving it up again under the assumption, which turned out to be false, that Hamas had been eradicated in those areas. Currently, Israel controls about three-quarters of the Gaza Strip.

Other countries have responded with sharp rebukes. Germany said this morning that it would no longer supply arms to Israel over the Gaza occupation plan. Officials from Belgium, Norway, and the U.K. have already voiced condemnation.

And “mediators from Egypt and Qatar are working on a new framework which will include the release of all hostages—dead and alive—in one go in return for an end of the war in Gaza and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the strip,” per two Arab officials, according to The Times of Israel. In some sense, this could have been Israel’s plan all along.

“The threat of a full occupation could be part of a strategy to try to force the group into making concessions in stalled ceasefire talks,” notes the BBC. “Israeli leaders say Hamas, for now, is not interested in negotiating as, in their view, the group is feeling emboldened, a view that seems to be shared by the Trump administration which has not expressed opposition to Israel’s plans.”

But Hamas has so far said that Israel’s decision to expand the war shows that Netanyahu and other Israeli politicians are “indifferent to the fate of their captives” and “fully aware that expanding the aggression would mean sacrificing them.” (It’s estimated that there are 50 remaining hostages, 30 of whom are believed to be dead.)

It’s also possible that Netanyahu is responding to internal pressures: There are elements of the right-wing in Israel that view total eradication of Hamas as absolutely necessary, and an occupation—first by the military, then by normal Israelis—as the best means of achieving that. Israeli politicians Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich have advocated, for example, “what they describe as the voluntary migration of Palestinians from Gaza…and resettling it with Jews,” per the BBC. (But it’s hard to say how exactly you get this voluntary migration, which sounds a little forced to me, especially if there’s an Israeli military occupation of the territory; Netanyahu’s comments about handing Gaza to “Arab forces” have so far rankled parts of his coalition.)

“According to the Israel Hayom daily, taking over Gaza City is expected to take three months, and two additional months will be needed to also seize control of central Gaza’s camps and clear the entire area of terror operatives,” per The Times of Israel. “The plan is therefore estimated to take a total of seven months to complete, and to require calling up an estimated 200,000 reservists.”

“Netanyahu has set himself an unachievable definition of success, and therefore the operation will never succeed,” Thomas R. Nides, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, told The New York Times. 

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Source: https://reason.com/2025/08/08/the-occupation/