Warning of kidnap plot, Katz threatens to depopulate Gaza City if soldier nabbed

Defense Minister Israel Katz announces there are “various intentions and intelligence” indicating Hamas is planning to carry out new kidnappings of Israelis, and threatens to flatten Gaza City if the terror group does so.

Katz does not offer details about the threat, but issues his warning to the Gaza-based terror group as well as Iran and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“In light of various intentions and intelligence, I warn the terror organization and its supporters, from Iran to Erdogan: if even one Israeli soldier or civilian is kidnapped, the entire Gaza City’s… one million residents will be evacuated southward,” Katz says at an annual memorial ceremony for soldiers killed in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He also threatens to take out the city’s “homes and terror towers.”

“It will be dealt with in the same way that Rafah and Beit Hanoun and 70 percent of the Gaza Strip were dealt with, until they are returned,” he adds, referring to sections of the Strip that the IDF razed during the war against Hamas following the October 7, 2023, onslaught.

Nearly all Gazans currently live in Gaza City and its environs along the coast, with the IDF controlling much of Gaza.

“This is the language that the jihadist terror organizations in Gaza and Lebanon understand, and this is the language we speak: Evacuating the population, destroying the infrastructure and taking the territory,” Katz adds.

He also reiterates that Israel “will not withdraw from the Yellow Line in Gaza to new lines of deployment inside Gaza as long as Hamas has not been eliminated and Gaza has not been disarmed of weapons and tunnels.”

Katz is known for his outspoken remarks, often aimed at Turkey amid an increase in tensions between Ankara and Jerusalem. There has been an increase in Katz’s controversial comments in recent weeks, ahead of Israel’s October 27 election.