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.
