Israel’s minister of military affairs has threatened to completely destroy Gaza City if the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas does not agree to its terms, including surrendering its arms.
The threat comes as Israeli forces prepare a full-scale assault on the city—home to nearly a million displaced civilians—despite urgent United Nations appeals to halt the operation amid what aid agencies describe as “unimaginable” levels of starvation and destruction.
“Soon, the gates of hell will open” in Gaza until Hamas agrees to “Israel's conditions for ending the war, primarily the release of all captives and the movement’s disarmament,” Israel Katz posted on social media on Friday.
“If they do not agree, Gaza, the capital of Hamas, will become Rafah and Beit Hanoun,” he added, invoking two cities in the territory that have already been reduced to rubble during Israel’s nearly two-year-long genocidal war.
The threat coincides with Israel’s push for the military plan to seize and occupy Gaza City with up to 60,000 reservists.
UN officials warn the offensive will trigger another wave of mass displacement, compounding a humanitarian crisis in which hundreds of thousands are already starving due to Israel’s blockade on food, fuel, and medicine.
Aid groups say the siege has turned Gaza into a “war on children,” with at least one in three children in Gaza City now malnourished.
The hawkish minister's remarks came after Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said late Thursday that he had ordered “immediate negotiations” to release all the remaining captives held in Gaza “on terms acceptable to Israel”.
Netanyahu claimed that the push to release the captives would accompany the invasion aimed at occupying Gaza City, the largest city in the strip.
However, Netanyahu refrained from making any official reference to the mediators’ latest ceasefire proposal, which Hamas accepted earlier this week.
On Wednesday, Hamas agreed to the latest proposal: a 60-day ceasefire that would include the return of half of the captives held in Gaza in exchange for Israel releasing a number of Palestinian prisoners.
The latest proposal also includes a path to a comprehensive deal that ends the nearly two-year genocidal war in Gaza.
While Qatar said the proposal was nearly identical to the one put forward by US special envoy Steve Witkoff and was accepted by Israel, mediators were still awaiting a response from the Israeli regime to the plan.
The UN humanitarian agency has warned that the Israeli plan to occupy Gaza City would have "a horrific humanitarian impact" on an already exhausted population.
Israel has launched a genocidal war on Gaza since October 7, 2023 after Palestinian resistance fighters waged the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the Zionist entity in response to the regime's decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.
The regime’s bloody onslaught on Gaza has so far killed more than 62,190 Palestinians, mostly women and children.
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