*Event date: 2025-05-05*
Israel's security cabinet has approved a plan that goes beyond earlier phases of the war in Gaza, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying the next offensive will involve holding territory and moving civilians south for what he described as their own protection. The Guardian reported that the decision was unanimously approved late on Sunday and that the operation is intended to leave Israeli forces in seized areas rather than conducting raids and withdrawing.
The army's chief spokesperson said the operation, called Gideon's Chariots, would include a wide-scale assault, the movement of most of Gaza's population into a so-called sterile area and continued strikes aimed at destroying Hamas infrastructure. That description matters because it suggests the new campaign is not just about pressure on militants but about reshaping where people in the territory can live and move. The plan is therefore likely to deepen the humanitarian emergency already gripping the enclave.
The report says more than 70% of Gaza is already under Israeli control or covered by evacuation orders, a figure that underlines how much of the strip has become inaccessible to civilians. Since the ceasefire collapsed in mid-March, Israel has expanded buffer zones along the perimeter and widened its hold over parts of the north and south. Netanyahu's own video message made clear that the government does not intend to repeat the old pattern of entering Gaza, striking targets and retreating.
The humanitarian consequences are already severe. Aid officials say much of Gaza's 2.3 million population cannot find enough to eat and that the aid system is close to collapse. Israeli officials have said there is enough food in the territory for now and that they may need to create a humanitarian distribution mechanism to stop Hamas from diverting supplies. That tension between military objectives and relief access sits at the centre of the current dispute over how the campaign will be run.
International reaction has been sharply critical. The UN secretary general's office warned that the plan would lead to more civilian deaths and more destruction, while the British Foreign Office said it did not support an expansion of military operations in Gaza and argued that continued fighting is in nobody's interests. Those responses reflect the wider fear that the new offensive will push already displaced people into even smaller areas while making aid delivery harder.
The cabinet move also comes as Israel says pressure on Hamas is needed to secure the release of hostages still held in Gaza. The Guardian reported that 58 hostages remain, including people the group seized during the October 7 attacks. Israel has framed the offensive as necessary to weaken Hamas governance and military capacity, but the scale of the planned operation and the explicit reference to population movement have drawn immediate scrutiny.
For now, the key shift is not just military but strategic. Israel is signalling that it wants durable control over parts of Gaza while also trying to redesign the territory's civilian geography. That approach raises the stakes for any future ceasefire or political settlement, because it makes the question of who governs and who returns far more difficult than in earlier rounds of fighting.
