The announcement suggests that Israel is shifting tactics to hold on to swaths of the territory, at least temporarily.
Reporting from Jerusalem
The Israeli government on Wednesday laid out plans to expand its renewed military offensive in the Gaza Strip and seize large parts of the enclave, a strategy that piles more pressure on Hamas and raises concerns about Israel’s plans beyond the war.
The announcement from Israel’s defense minister adds to the growing drumbeat from officials in recent days who have suggested that Israel was shifting tactics to hold on to swaths of the territory, at least temporarily. They have asserted a vision for postwar Gaza in which Palestinians would move elsewhere — an idea vehemently rejected by much of the world.
In the 15-month military campaign that preceded a January truce, Israeli forces stormed Gazan cities before withdrawing, leaving behind vast destruction but allowing Palestinian militants to regroup in the rubble.
In the weeks after the cease-fire took hold, many Gazans also returned home, but Israel resumed its attacks in mid-March.
Now, the Israeli military appears to be planning to station forces in captured territory. The defense minister, Israel Katz, on Wednesday said newly captured areas would be “added to the security zones” that the military currently maintains in Gaza, including a buffer along the enclave’s borders with Egypt and Israel, and much of a key road in the center of the enclave.
He added that the expanding operation involved “wide-scale evacuations of Gaza’s population from combat zones.”
This week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also set forth demands for postwar Gaza — all of which are likely to be nonstarters for Hamas. They include Hamas’s laying down its arms, comprehensive Israeli security control in Gaza and what he called voluntary migration for Gazans and that others have condemned as forcible displacement.
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