Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel is “seizing territory” and intends to “divide up” the Gaza Strip by building a new security corridor, amid a major expansion of aerial and ground operations in the besieged Palestinian territory.
“Tonight, we have shifted gears in the Gaza Strip. The [Israeli army] is seizing territory, hitting the terrorists and destroying the infrastructure,” the prime minister said in a video statement on Wednesday evening.
“We are also doing another thing – seizing the ‘Morag route’. This will be the second Philadelphi route, another Philadelphi route,” he said, referring to an Israeli-held corridor along the Egypt-Gaza border.
“Because we are currently dividing up the strip, we are adding pressure step by step, so that our hostages will be given to us,” Netanyahu added.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have seized buffer zones around Gaza’s edges totalling 62 sq km, or 17% of the strip, since the war began in October 2023, according to the Israeli human rights group Gisha.
The Netzarim corridor, named for a defunct Israeli settlement, now cuts off Gaza City from the south of the strip.
Morag was a Jewish settlement that once stood between Rafah and Khan Younis, so the use of the name suggests the new corridor is designed to separate the two southern cities.
The Israeli prime minister’s announcement follows remarks on Wednesday from his defence minister, Israel Katz, who said the Israeli army would “seize large areas” of Gaza, necessitating large-scale civilian evacuations.
Neither Netanyahu nor Katz elaborated on how much Palestinian land Israel intended to capture in the renewed offensive, but the move is likely to complicate ceasefire talks and inflame fears that Israel intends to take permanent control of the strip when the war ends.
Israel’s newly stated intentions to establish another military corridor followed a night of intense airstrikes on Khan Younis and Rafah in southern Gaza, which hospital officials said had killed at least 21 people.
An airstrike on Wednesday afternoon on a Jabaliya health clinic housing displaced people killed at least 19 people, including nine children, according to the civil defence agency.
The IDF said in a statement it had taken precautions to avoid civilian casualties in the bombing of what it said was a Hamas control centre in the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north of the strip. It later said it was aware the target was located in the same building as the clinic.
Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said in a statement that the strike hit “two rooms on the first floor of an Unrwa destroyed health centre” that had been used as a shelter for 160 displaced families.
“Many displaced families have not left the site, simply because they have absolutely nowhere else to go,” the statement said. The agency had shared the building’s coordinates with the IDF, it added.
In Khan Younis, the bodies of five women, one of them pregnant, two children and three men from the same family were brought to Nasser hospital on Wednesday morning, medics said. The IDF said it was examining the reports of civilian deaths.
Palestinian media reported bombing and shelling along the Egyptian border, at least two airstrikes on Gaza City, and Israeli troop movement in the Rafah area. The IDF said it had deployed an extra division to southern Gaza early on Wednesday.
The Israeli military issued sweeping evacuation orders last week telling people in Rafah and a swath of land stretching northwards towards Khan Younis to move to al-Mawasi, an area on the shore that Israel has designated as a humanitarian zone but has repeatedly bombed.
Israel renewed intensive bombing across Gaza on 18 March, followed by the redeployment of ground troops, abruptly ending the two-month ceasefire and exchanges of Israeli hostages held by Palestinian militant groups and Palestinians in Israeli jails.
According to the terms of the truce, the sides were supposed to negotiate implementing further phases of the deal during the first 42-day stage, but the Israeli government repeatedly postponed the talks.
The latest UN estimate, from 23 March, suggested approximately 140,000 people had been displaced since the end of the ceasefire. More than 90% of the strip’s population of 2.3 million have been forced to flee their homes during the conflict, many of them multiple times.
Hundreds of people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes since it ended the ceasefire. Israel has also cut off humanitarian aid, food and fuel to the strip in an effort to pressure Hamas. The month-long blockade is now the longest in the war to date.
Efforts led by Qatari and Egyptian mediators to resume talks aimed at ending the war have not yet led to a breakthrough. The resumption of fighting in Gaza has also fuelled protests in Israel against the government from supporters of the remaining hostages and their loved ones.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which represents most captives’ relatives, said it was “horrified to wake up this morning to the defence minister’s announcement about expanding military operations in Gaza”.
The group said: “Our highest priority must be an immediate deal to bring ALL hostages back home – the living for rehabilitation and those killed for proper burial – and end this war.”
The 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on southern Israel, in which Israel says 1,200 people, the majority of them civilians, were killed and a further 250 taken captive, was the trigger for the conflict in Gaza, the worst war between Israel and the Palestinians in more than 70 years of fighting.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 50,357 people, the majority of them civilians, according to the territory’s health ministry.
