Netanyahu: IDF will hold captured areas in Gaza until Hamas defeated, hostages freed
PM says military will no longer withdraw from seized territory; IDF spokesman says new ‘wide-scale attack’ will move ‘majority’ of Gazan population to areas ‘sterile of Hamas’
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that the military will stay stationed in whatever areas of the Gaza Strip are captured until all the goals of the war are reached, a day after the cabinet voted to intensify combat operations against the Hamas terror group.
In a video posted on his personal X account, Netanyahu said that “last night we sat late into the night in the cabinet and decided on an intensified operation in Gaza.”
“This was the recommendation of [IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir] — to move, as he put it, toward the defeat of Hamas,” he continued.
“He believes this will also help us rescue the hostages along the way. I agree with him. We are not letting up on this effort, and we will not give up on a single one. That is what we are doing,” he said.
“We won’t talk about the details because we’ve already spoken in detail about both of these matters: what we’re doing for the hostages, and what we’re doing for the defeat [of Hamas],” Netanyahu added.
“One thing will be clear — we’re not going in and out [of Gaza] just to call up reserves so they’ll come and seize territory, we withdraw from territory, and carry out raids on what remains… That’s not the intention. What’s our intention? The opposite,” he concluded.
מעדכן אתכם גם היום בלי הפילטרים של התקשורת >>
תרשמו לי את השאלות שלכם למטה. pic.twitter.com/b1c0XZFSI8
— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) May 5, 2025
IDF Spokesman Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin said Monday evening that the goal of the “new and intensified phase” of the war, dubbed Operation Gideon’s Chariots, “is the return of our hostages and the defeat of Hamas’s rule.”
“These two goals are combined with each other,” he said, adding that the offensive “will include a wide-scale attack and the movement of the majority of the Strip’s population — this is to protect them in an area sterile of Hamas. And continued airstrikes, elimination of terrorists, and dismantling of infrastructure.”
Defrin said the IDF will implement the “Rafah model,” whereby all Hamas infrastructure is razed and the area is declared part of Israel’s buffer zone, in other parts of the Strip.
An Israeli official said earlier Monday that the new plan provided for the “conquering of Gaza,” retaining the territory, moving of the Palestinian civilian population toward the south of the Strip, attacking Hamas, and preventing the terror group from taking control of humanitarian aid supplies.
According to the official, “a central component of the plan is the extensive evacuation of the entire Gazan population from combat zones, including from northern Gaza, to areas in southern Gaza, while creating separation between them and Hamas terrorists, to allow the IDF operational freedom of action.”
Netanyahu’s video, along with the statements from the IDF spokesman and the official, affirmed what many government figures have said since the cabinet’s decision was announced Sunday night, namely that the IDF will no longer withdraw from captured areas as it has done during much of the first year and a half of the war against Hamas in Gaza.
Some government figures even went a step further than the prime minister, saying that Israel’s goal is to “occupy” the Strip, a word Netanyahu did not use in his statement.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Monday that Israel will not withdraw from Gaza, even if there is another hostage deal, telling Israelis to “stop being afraid of the word ‘occupation.'”
“We are finally going to occupy the Gaza Strip,” the far-right minister said.
Similarly, Culture Minister Miki Zohar said Monday that the real goal of the renewed Israeli offensive against Hamas is “the complete occupation of the Strip,” acknowledging that “such a move endangers those who remain in captivity, but there is no choice left.”
Responding to the cabinet decision and the statements from ministers, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum on Monday accused the government of “choosing territory over hostages,” and noted that “this is against the will of over 70 percent of the people.”
Polls have consistently shown that a large majority of the Israeli public favors a deal that would see all the hostages held in Gaza released, even if it means ending the war.
“The plan approved by the cabinet deserves the name ‘Smotrich-Netanyahu Plan’ for giving up on the hostages and its abandonment of national and security resilience,” the forum said.
Throughout the fighting, Smotrich and others on the far right have urged using the war as an opportunity to reestablish Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip, which existed until a unilateral withdrawal in 2005.
The new plan was also assailed by opposition politicians, who accused the government of prioritizing political survival over the lives of hostages and IDF soldiers.
The Democrats party chairman Yair Golan said that “Occupying the Strip, in practice, for the sake of ‘the survival of the government’ will cost us in blood,” and that the new plan was not formulated to “protect the security of Israel, but in order to save Netanyahu and his government of extremists.”
Avigdor Liberman, chairman of the hawkish Yisrael Beytenu party, charged Monday that “this is a war not for security, but for control,” adding that the government would “do anything” to maintain power, “even at the expense of the lives of hostages and soldiers.”
The Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, which sparked the current war, saw thousands of terrorists storm southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, of whom 58 remain in Gaza, including at least 35 who are thought to be dead, in addition to the remains of a soldier who was killed in the Strip in 2014.
Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 414.
More than 52,500 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, according to the Hamas-controlled health ministry.
The figures cannot be independently verified, and do not distinguish between combatants and civilians. Israel says it has killed some 20,000 combatants in battle as of January, and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the Hamas onslaught.
The Times of Israel Community.