Key events
Indonesia will convert a medical facility on an uninhabited island to treat about 2,000 wounded residents of Gaza, according to a spokesperson for the president, reports Kate Lamb and agencies.
“Indonesia will give medical help for about 2,000 Gaza residents who became victims of war, those who are wounded, buried under debris,” Hasan Nasbi said in Jakarta on Thursday.
Indonesia plans to allocate the facility on Galang island, home to a former refugee camp for Vietnamese asylum seekers which lies off its island of Sumatra, to treat the wounded Gaza residents and temporarily shelter their families, the spokesperson said.
The patients would be taken back to Gaza after they had healed, he added, without providing further details on the timing of the plan, or how their return would be guaranteed.
Muslim-majority Indonesia has sent humanitarian aid to Gaza during the war and the announcement follows an Axios report in July that the director of Israel’s Mossad spy agency had sought US help in convincing several countries – including Indonesia, Libya and Ethiopia – to take in hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza.
See the full report here:
The Axios reporter Barak Ravid has cited an Israeli official as saying Israel’s occupation of Gaza City is to involve besieging Hamas fighters there while carrying out a ground offensive.
Ravid’s post on X says:
Senior Israeli official tells me: The operation that the IDF is currently preparing for is only in Gaza City. The goal is to evacuate all Palestinian civilians from Gaza City to the central camps and other areas by October 7. A siege will be imposed on the Hamas militants who remain in Gaza City, and at the same time, a ground offensive will be carried out in Gaza City. The Prime Minister and the Defense Minister have been authorized to approve the IDF’s final operational plan
The Israeli prime minister’s office also said the “vast majority of cabinet ministers believed that the alternative plan presented in the cabinet would not achieve the defeat of Hamas nor the return of the hostages”.
Netanyahu’s office said on X that the security cabinet voted by a majority to adopt what he called “the five principles for ending the war”. It listed them as (translated from Hebrew):
1. Disarming Hamas of its weapons.
2. Return of all hostages – both the living and the deceased.
3. Demilitarization of the Gaza Strip.
4. Israeli security control over the Gaza Strip.
5. Establishment of an alternative civilian administration that is neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has said on social media that the Israel Defense Forces will prepare to take over Gaza City and to provide aid to civilians outside the areas of fighting.
The full post on X (translated from Hebrew) reads:
The Political-Security Cabinet approved the Prime Minister’s proposal for the defeat of Hamas.
The IDF will prepare to take control of Gaza City while providing humanitarian aid to the civilian population outside the combat zones.
Opening summary
Welcome to our live coverage of the Israel-Gaza war.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s office says Israel’s security cabinet has approved a plan to take over Gaza City after he earlier said the country intended to take full control of the entire Gaza Strip.
The decision early on Friday marks another escalation of Israel’s offensive in Gaza.
Ahead of the security cabinet meeting, which began on Thursday and ran through the night, Netanyahu said Israel planned to retake control over the whole territory and eventually hand it off to friendly Arab forces opposed to Hamas.
The announced plans stop short of that, perhaps reflecting the reservations of Israel’s top general, who reportedly warned that it would endanger the remaining 20 or so living hostages held by Hamas and further strain Israel’s army after nearly two years of regional wars, the Associated Press reports.
Many families of hostages are also opposed, fearing further escalation will doom their loved ones.
A Hamas official was reported as telling the Al Jazeera Mubasher television network that the militant group would treat any force formed to govern Gaza per Netanyahu’s suggestion as an “occupying” force linked the Israel. And in the first reaction by a main Arab neighbour to Netanyahu’s comments, a Jordanian official told Reuters that Arabs “will only support what Palestinians agree and decide on”.
In key developments:
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Before the security cabinet meeting, Netanyahu was asked on Fox News if Israel would “take control of all of Gaza” and he replied: “We intend to, in order to assure our security, remove Hamas there, enable the population to be free of Gaza.” The Israeli prime minister said: “We don’t want to keep it. We want to have a security perimeter. We want to hand it over to Arab forces that will govern it properly without threatening us and giving Gazans a good life.”
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Israeli media reported that Netanyahu was hoping to obtain approval for fully controlling Gaza at the security cabinet meeting. The plan would mean sending ground troops into the few areas of the strip that have not been totally destroyed – roughly 25% of the territory where many of its 2 million people have sought refuge.
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Israel was reportedly preparing a two-phase operation aimed at seizing control of Gaza City, with plans to evacuate about 1 million residents – half of Gaza’s population – in what officials described as a temporary measure to establish civilian infrastructure in central Gaza.
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The proposal was being framed as a limited operation rather than a full invasion, apparently to placate military chiefs wary of long-term occupation, according to Israel’s Channel 12. The chief of staff, Lt Gen Eyal Zamir, has reportedly warned that occupying Gaza would plunge Israel into a “black hole” of prolonged insurgency, humanitarian responsibility and heightened risk to hostages.
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At least 42 Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes and shootings across southern Gaza on Thursday, according to local hospitals. Of the 42, 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.
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The World Health Organization said on Thursday that 99 people were known to have died from malnutrition in Gaza this year and the figure was probably an underestimate, amid famine warnings from UN agencies.
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The families of the roughly 20 remaining living hostages held in Gaza have called for Israelis to protest against the government and a decision they fear would endanger the lives of their loved ones.