Minister says IDF should expand Gaza op, even at risk of endangering hostages

National Missions and Settlements Minister Orit Strock calls for the IDF to expand its operations in Gaza to encompass the entire Strip, including areas where hostages are known to be held, even though doing so would likely endanger them further.

“There must not be ‘don’t touch me’ zones [in Gaza], because it endangers residents of the Gaza border communities and all the residents of the south,” the Religious Zionism minister tells the Haredi Kol Barama radio station. “To win the war, [we] need to control those areas as well, and not leave them as terror hubs above and below ground.”

She says that while forces must make a “great effort” not to harm the hostages being held in these areas, it could happen anyway.

“It’s not right to refrain from vanquishing Hamas there,” she says. Terror operatives in these no-go zones open fire on southern Israel daily, and try to kidnap soldiers, she says.

“That also risks lives,” she asserts, adding that she “cannot make calculations about whether this person’s life is more important than that person’s life.”

In response, the Hostages Families Forum accuses the far-right minister, who has repeatedly expressed opposition to a truce-hostage deal, of “betting on the fate of the hostages and normalizing their captivity.”

“Strock is leading to the sacrifice of the hostages… and along with them, the values on which the State of Israel was founded, all in the name of an endless, aimless, irrational war — a war that must end for the sake of the entire nation of Israel,” says the forum.

“It’s unsurprising coming from someone who has, since the beginning, been a stubborn obstacle to saving the hostages. This is a disgrace for the government.”