Israel’s Netanyahu says he wants to take control of all of Gaza
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that Israel intends to take military control of all of Gaza and will eventually hand it over to Arab forces that will govern it properly.
“We intend to,” Netanyahu said in an interview with Fox News when asked if Israel would take control of the entire 26-mile strip.
“We don’t want to keep it. We want to have a security perimeter. We don’t want to govern it. We don’t want to be there as a governing body.”
He made the comments as the security cabinet were due to meet on Thursday. More on this as we get it.
Key events
A Jordanian official told Reuters that Arabs “will only support what Palestinians agree and decide on” after Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel wanted to hand over Gaza to Arab forces that would govern it.
“Security in Gaza must be done through legitimate Palestinian institutions,” the source said.
Israeli media has reported part of the security cabinet meeting
The IDF’s chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, has warned Benjamin Netanyahu about the hostages still in Gaza, according to broadcaster Channel 12.
“The lives of the hostages will be in danger if we embark on a plan to occupy Gaza,” the broadcaster reports him as saying.
“There is no way to guarantee that we will not be harmed by them. Our forces are worn out, the military equipment needs maintenance, and there are humanitarian and sanitary problems.”
Britain continues to run near daily surveillance flights over Gaza with the help of a US contractor at a time of growing questions about how the intelligence obtained is used and shared with the Israeli military, writes Dan Sabbagh and Geneva Abdul.
Specialist flight trackers estimate that RAF Shadow aircraft have run more than 600 flights over the Palestinian territory from the Akrotiri airbase in Cyprus in an attempt to locate the remaining hostages held by Hamas since December 2023.
Spy flights were started under the Conservatives but have continued under Labour with few details shared publicly, at a rate of about two a day at first but dropping to one a day more recently, specialist trackers said.
Surveillance was transferred to a US contractor, Sierra Nevada Corporation, in late July to reduce costs and RAF sources indicated that it continues most days in an equivalent aircraft. But within days there was a mistake when the new spy plane was revealed to be circling over Khan Younis on 28 July.
Until that time the spy planes’ transponders were turned off halfway into their flight from Akrotiri heading towards Gaza over the eastern Mediterranean. But the mistake meant that “the RAF (now contracted) flights could be confirmed over Gaza, not just adjacent to Gaza,” said the flight tracker and analyst Steffan Watkins.
The US has presented Lebanon with a proposal for disarming Hezbollah by the end of the year, along with ending Israel’s military operations in the country and the withdrawal of its troops from five positions in south Lebanon, according to a copy of a Lebanese cabinet agenda reviewed by Reuters.
The plan, submitted by president Donald Trump’s envoy to the region, Tom Barrack, and being discussed at a Lebanese cabinet meeting on Thursday, sets out the most detailed steps yet for disarming the Iran-backed Hezbollah group, which has rejected mounting calls to disarm since last year’s war with Israel.
Lebanese information minister Paul Morcos said after the cabinet meeting on Thursday that the cabinet approved only the objectives of Barrack’s plan but did not discuss it in full.
“We did not delve into the details or components of the US proposal. Our discussion and decision were limited to its objectives,” Morcos said.
The objectives of the US proposal would include phasing out the armed presence of non-state actors including Hezbollah, deploying Lebanese forces to key border and internal areas, ensuring Israel’s withdrawal from the five positions, resolving prisoner issues through indirect talks, and permanently demarcating Lebanon’s borders with Israel and Syria.
Israel’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel intends to take military control of all of Gaza, despite intensifying criticism at home and abroad.
“We intend to,” Netanyahu said in an interview with Fox News Channel when asked if Israel would take over the entire coastal territory.
“We don’t want to keep it. We want to have a security perimeter. We don’t want to govern it. We don’t want to be there as a governing body.”
Netanyahu made the comments shortly before a meeting he was due to have on Thursday with a small group of senior ministers to discuss plans for the military to take control of more territory in Gaza.
The security cabinet session follows another meeting this week with the head of the military, which Israeli officials have described as tense, saying Eyal Zamir had pushed back on expanding the campaign.
Two government sources told Reuters any resolution by the security cabinet would need to be approved by the full cabinet, which may not meet until Sunday.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Avichay Adraee is calling on Palestinians in the al-Daraj and al-Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City’s old town to “evacuate immediately”.
He wrote on X: “The IDF continues to operate with great force wherever terrorist activity is carried out and rockets are fired towards Israel.”
People are advised to move towards the Bedouin coastal town of al-Mawasi – an Israel-designated civilian “safe zone” where up to 500,000 Palestinians are sheltering in overcrowded conditions.
Hamas said in a statement that Benjamin Netanyahu’s remark that Israel intends to take military control of all of Gaza constituted “a coup” amid the Gaza ceasefire negotiations.
Netanyahu’s plans to expand Israel’s Gaza offensive show his aim is to sacrifice Israel’s own hostages to serve his personal interests, Hamas added.
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed more than 61,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Local hospitals said at least 42 have been killed today.
Of those, at least 13 were said to be trying to get aid in an Israeli military zone in southern Gaza.
Another two were killed on roads leading to nearby sites run by the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, according to Nasser hospital.
Outside the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem on Thursday evening, hundreds of demonstrators gathered to protest against the notion of an expanded war, demanding an immediate end to the military campaign in return for the release of all of the hostages.
Protesters held signs bearing the faces of hostages still held in Gaza and voiced deep frustration with the government’s handling of the crisis.
“I’m here because I am sick and tired of this government. It’s ruined our life,” said 55-year-old Noa Starkman, a Jerusalem resident who was born in a southern Israeli community close to where Hamas attacked in October 2023.
The Hostages Families Forum, which represents captives held in Gaza, urged military Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir to oppose widening the war and the government to accept a deal that would end the war and free the remaining hostages.
The day so far
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Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that Israel intends to take military control of all of Gaza and will eventually hand it over to Arab forces that will govern it properly. “We intend to,” Netanyahu said in an interview with Fox News when asked if Israel would take control of the entire 26-mile strip.
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The Israeli security cabinet has begun discussing a possible expansion of Israel’s military operations in Gaza. It represents a move that, if it happens, would come despite fierce opposition from many in Israel, including the families of hostages who remain in Hamas captivity.
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Of the 42 people killed on Thursday, at least 13 were seeking aid in an Israeli military zone in southern Gaza where UN aid convoys are regularly overwhelmed by looters and desperate crowds. Another two were killed on roads leading to nearby sites run by the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an American contractor, according to Nasser Hospital, which received the bodies, AP reported.
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The medical NGO Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has called for the immediate closure of Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the US- and Israeli-backed aid organisation operating in Gaza, describing GHF-run food distribution sites in Gaza as having become sites of “orchestrated killing and dehumanisation”. In a social media post on Thursday, MSF wrote: “In MSF’s nearly 54 years of operations, rarely have we seen such levels of systematic violence against unarmed civilians. The GHF-run food distributions in Gaza, Palestine, have become sites of “orchestrated killing and dehumanisation”, not humanitarian aid.”
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There is an upward trend in the number of trucks entering Gaza but it is still below what was agreed between the European Union and Israel under a deal last month on improving humanitarian access, the bloc’s foreign policy and humanitarian arms said in a document seen by Reuters on Thursday. The UN and other partners report that 463 trucks were offloaded at crossing points to Gaza between 29 July and 4 August, the document said.
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Israeli authorities returned the body of a Palestinian activist killed by an Israeli settler last week, after female Bedouin relatives launched a hunger strike to protest against the authority’s decision to hold his body in custody, reports the Associated Press. The hunger strike was a rare public call from Bedouin women who traditionally mourn in private. Witnesses said Awdah al-Hathaleen was shot and killed by a radical Israeli settler during a confrontation caught on video last month.
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Zadie Smith, Michael Rosen, Irvine Welsh and Jeanette Winterson are among more than 200 writers who have signed a letter calling for an “immediate and complete” boycott of Israel until the people of Gaza are given adequate food, water and aid. Hanif Kureishi, Brian Eno, Elif Shafak, George Monbiot, Benjamin Myers, Geoff Dyer and Sarah Hall also signed the letter, which advocates the cessation of all “trade, exchange and business” with Israel.
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Human Rights Watch have called on governments worldwide to suspend their arms transfers to Israel after deadly airstrikes on two Palestinian schools last year, reports the Associated Press. Human Rights Watch said an investigation did not find any evidence of a military target at either school.
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Gaza has seen its highest monthly figure of acute malnutrition in children, with hunger-related deaths rising in the territory, the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday. He added that malnutrition is widespread in the territory, reports Reuters.
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Demonstrations have been planned across Israel on Thursday evening to protest against the expected security cabinet decision, reports the Associated Press. On Thursday morning, almost two dozen relatives of hostages being held in Gaza set sail from southern Israel towards the maritime border with Gaza, where they broadcast messages from loudspeakers on boats to their relatives in Gaza.
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Police on Thursday said they had charged the first three people in England and Wales with supporting activist group Palestine Action since it was banned under anti-terrorism laws. Two women and a man were charged under the UK’s Terrorism Act of 2000 after their arrest at a protest in central London on 5 July, the capital’s Metropolitan police force said.
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Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief of staff Eyal Zamir vowed on Thursday to continue expressing the military’s position “without fear” ahead of an expected security cabinet meeting where war plans for Gaza will likely be discussed. “We will continue to express our position without fear, in a pragmatic, independent, and professional manner,” Zamir said according to a military statement reported by Agence France-Presse.
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Indonesia will convert a medical facility on its currently uninhabited island of Galang to treat about 2,000 injured residents of Gaza, who will return home after recovery, a presidential spokesperson said on Thursday, according to Reuters. Muslim-majority Indonesia has sent humanitarian aid to Gaza after Israel started an offensive in October 2023 that Gaza health officials say has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians (the Gaza health ministry doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants).
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US president Donald Trump said on Thursday it was important that Middle Eastern countries join the Abraham Accords, saying it will ensure peace in the region. “Now that the nuclear arsenal being ‘created’ by Iran has been totally OBLITERATED, it is very important to me that all Middle Eastern Countries join the Abraham Accords,” Trump wrote in a social media post.
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The United States has presented Lebanon with a proposal for disarming Hezbollah by the end of the year, along with ending Israel’s military operations in the country and the withdrawal of its troops from five positions in south Lebanon, according to copy of a Lebanese cabinet agenda reviewed by Reuters. The plan, submitted by US president Donald Trump’s envoy to the region, Tom Barrack, and being discussed at a Lebanese cabinet meeting on Thursday, sets out the most detailed steps yet for disarming the Iran-backed Hezbollah, which has rejected mounting calls to disarm since last year’s devastating war with Israel.
The Israeli security cabinet has begun discussing a possible expansion of Israel’s military operations in Gaza.
It represents a move that, if it happens, would come despite fierce opposition from many in Israel, including the families of hostages who remain in Hamas captivity.
The meeting comes on a day when at least 42 Palestinians were killed in airstrikes and shootings across southern Gaza, according to local hospitals.
The United States has presented Lebanon with a proposal for disarming Hezbollah by the end of the year, along with ending Israel’s military operations in the country and the withdrawal of its troops from five positions in south Lebanon, according to copy of a Lebanese cabinet agenda reviewed by Reuters.
The plan, submitted by US president Donald Trump’s envoy to the region, Tom Barrack, and being discussed at a Lebanese cabinet meeting on Thursday, sets out the most detailed steps yet for disarming the Iran-backed Hezbollah, which has rejected mounting calls to disarm since last year’s devastating war with Israel.
The US State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Lebanese government ministers could not immediately be reached for comment.
Hezbollah had no immediate comment on the proposal, but three political sources told Reuters that ministers from the Iran-backed group and their Muslim Shi’ite allies withdrew from Thursday’s cabinet meeting in protest at discussions of the proposal.
Of the 42 people killed on Thursday, at least 13 were seeking aid in an Israeli military zone in southern Gaza where UN aid convoys are regularly overwhelmed by looters and desperate crowds.
Another two were killed on roads leading to nearby sites run by the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an American contractor, according to Nasser Hospital, which received the bodies, AP reported.
Neither the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation nor the Israeli military, which helps secure the group’s sites, commented on the strikes or shootings. The military zone, known as the Morag Corridor, is off limits to independent media.
