The Israeli Security Cabinet decided by a “decisive majority” to approve Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to defeat Hamas, including controlling Gaza City, the premier’s office said shortly before 5 a.m. on Friday.
“A decisive majority of Security Cabinet ministers believed that the alternative plan that had been submitted to the Security Cabinet would neither achieve the defeat of Hamas nor the return of the hostages,” according to Netanyahu’s office.
The Israel Defense Forces will prepare for “taking control of Gaza City, while distributing humanitarian assistance to the civilian population outside the combat zones,” the Prime Minister’s Office said.
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee on Wednesday confirmed there will soon be a significant increase in the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s aid distribution footprint in the Strip.
“The immediate plan is to scale up the number of sites up to 16 and begin to operate as much as 24 hours a day to get more food to more people more efficiently,” the diplomat said on Fox News.
Netanyahu’s office said on Friday that the forum voted on five principles: disarming Hamas, returning all of the living and dead hostages, demilitarizing Gaza, Israeli security control of the Strip and creating an “alternative civil administration that is neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority.”
On Thursday, Netanyahu confirmed that Israel intends to take control of the entire Gaza Strip to remove Hamas, and transfer authority to non-hostile “civilian governance.”
“We want to liberate ourselves and liberate the people of Gaza from the awful terror of Hamas,” the prime minister told Fox News.
Netanyahu stressed that the Israeli government does not “want to keep it” after taking control of the entire 26-mile-long coastal enclave.
“We want to have a security perimeter,” he said. “We don’t want to be there as a governing body. We want to hand it over to Arab forces that will govern it properly, without threatening us, and giving Gazans a good life. That’s not possible with Hamas.”
David Friedman, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, stated that “Israel’s objectives in Gaza have been the same since Oct. 7—defeat Hamas, such that it no longer threatens Israel or the people in Gaza and recover all the hostages.
“These goals have not changed even for a single day. To those who criticize Netanyahu’s decision to control Gaza temporarily, what else should he do?” Friedman asked. “There is no hostage deal on the table, and there is no willingness by Hamas to surrender. And the abandonment of Israel by the United Kingdom, Canada and France, along with 27 Democrat senators, gives Hamas no incentive to make a deal.”
Later on Friday, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir held a situational assessment at Southern Command headquarters in Beersheva, with the participation of General Staff officers.
Zamir noted that in the coming days the IDF will deepen operational planning, while maintaining troop safety and endurance—all with the goal of creating the conditions for the return of the hostages and the dismantling of Hamas’s rule, the IDF said in a statement.
