The Israel Defense Forces is strengthening its hold of the Gaza Strip and currently controls some 60% of the enclave, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed on Sunday.
“We are no longer holding 50%, but already 60%,” Netanyahu told reporters at a Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. “We have Hamas in our grip.”
Under the terms of the first phase of the Oct. 10, 2025, ceasefire brokered by the United States, the IDF was given control of 53% of Gaza’s territory, east of the truce-instituted Yellow Line.
Israel Hayom reported on May 12 that the military in recent weeks seized control of 13 more square miles, leaving the IDF in control of about 64% of the Strip. The move was reportedly carried out with approval from U.S. President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, following the failure of Hamas terrorists to disarm under Washington’s peace plan.
“We know exactly what our mission is, and our mission is one: To ensure that Gaza will never again pose a threat to Israel, and we are carrying out this mission too with the help of our heroic soldiers,” Netanyahu declared in his remarks on Sunday.
The premier spoke two days after the IDF targeted and killed the head of Hamas’s “military wing,” Izz al-Din al-Haddad, in a precision airstrike in Gaza City’s Rimal neighborhood.
“He was essentially No. 1 in Hamas’s military wing. He has been eliminated. This despicable terrorist was responsible for the murder, injury and kidnapping of thousands of Israeli citizens and IDF soldiers. He used hostages as human shields, and he is no longer with us,” Netanyahu said.
The prime minister noted that his government promised to return all 251 captives taken during the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, in addition to killing “every single architect of the massacre and the hostage-taking.
“We are very close to completing this mission as well,” he said.
The current truce in the Gaza Strip ended the two-year war that began when Hamas, other Palestinian terrorist groups and Gazan “civilians” invaded the northwestern Negev on Oct. 7, 2023, killing approximately 1,200 people, primarily civilians, and taking 251 hostages.
