Israel has announced it is expanding its military operations in Gaza City, as the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, condemned its approval of a huge new illegal settlement in the West Bank as a “flagrant breach of international law.”
The Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Effie Defrin said the IDF had begun the second phase of Operation Gideon’s Chariots in Gaza, which it launched in May.
He said the IDF would intensify efforts to harm Hamas in Gaza City, which he deemed a “stronghold of regime and military terror”, as part of the operation.
Defrin’s briefing coincided with a statement from Benjamin Netanyahu’s office in which he called for the acceleration of a much-threatened offensive to conquer Gaza City, an urban area home to hundreds of thousands of people in the north of the territory.
“Ahead of approval of the plans for the operation in Gaza City, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has directed that the timetables – for seizing control of the last terrorist strongholds and the defeat of Hamas – be shortened,” the statement said.
It was unclear if Defrin’s statement was referring to the wider operation, plans for which have drawn widespread international condemnation.
Hamas said that Israel’s plans to conquer Gaza City showed its “blatant disregard” for efforts to broker a ceasefire and hostage deal.
“Today’s announcement by the terrorist occupation army of the start of an operation against Gaza City and its nearly one million residents and displaced persons … demonstrates … a blatant disregard for the efforts made by the mediators,” it said in a statement.
Israeli talk of a large-scale operation could primarily be intended to put pressure on Hamas in ongoing negotiations over a ceasefire and an end to the war.
Defrin said Israeli forces were already occupying the outskirts of Gaza City and were operating in the Zeitoun neighbourhood.
Israel had announced earlier on Wednesday that it was calling up an extra 60,000 reservists for the Gaza City offensive. It justified launching a new phase by citing an attack by about 18 Hamas fighters on an Israeli position the day before, which it had characterised as large-scale, despite its small size in reality.
Thousands of Palestinians, facing widening conditions of starvation in Gaza, had already begun to flee in recent days in anticipation of the assault.
Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, said on Wednesday that Israel’s assault on Gaza had caused “massacres and starvation” and that its wider actions were “killing all prospects” for peace in the Middle East.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, echoed the sentiment, saying the proposed offensive would lead to “true disaster” and drag the region into permanent war.
Germany said it found it “increasingly difficult to understand how these actions will lead to the freeing of all the hostages, or to a ceasefire”, the government spokesperson Steffen Meyer told reporters.
The Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, announced that he had approved a plan to conquer Gaza City despite the decision earlier this week by Hamas and other Palestinian factions in Gaza to accept a ceasefire proposal that in most of its most significant details aligns with one Israel had previously agreed. It has yet to formally respond to the latest proposal.
Israel also announced on Wednesday that plans to build a major new illegal settlement block in the West Bank had been approved. The block would split the West Bank into two with the deliberate intention – according to Israel’s far-right finance minster, Bezalel Smotrich – of killing off any prospect of a Palestinian state.
Lammy wrote on X that if implemented the plan “would divide a Palestinian state in two, mark a flagrant breach of international law and critically undermine the two-state solution”.
Israel’s top planning committee approved plans for the E1 settlement in an area of land east of Jerusalem that critics have said would undermine hopes for a contiguous Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Smotrich backed plans last week to build 3,400 homes on a contentious parcel of land that lies between Jerusalem and the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim.
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, said building Israeli homes there would put an end to hopes for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Amid credible evidence that its policies in Gaza have led to conditions of mass starvation and accusations of genocide, Israel has reiterated its defiance of outraged international opinion that is threatening to turn it into a pariah state, even as a growing number of countries have said they plan to recognise Palestinian statehood.
The call-up of 60,000 reservists and extension of the service for another 20,000 soldiers took place days after hundreds of thousands of Israelis rallied to call for a ceasefire.
A growing campaign of exhausted reservists has accused the government of perpetuating the war for political reasons and failing to bring home the remaining hostages.
The families of the hostages and former army and intelligence chiefs have also expressed opposition to the expanded operation in Gaza City. Most of the families want an immediate ceasefire and worry an expanded assault could imperil efforts to bring home the 50 hostages still in Gaza. Israel believes that 20 are still alive.
A military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity in line with military regulations, said troops would operate in parts of Gaza City where they have not yet been deployed and where Israel believes Hamas is still active.
Gaza City is Hamas’s military and governing stronghold and one of the last places of refuge in northern Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of people are sheltering. Israeli troops would target Hamas’s vast underground tunnel network there, the official said.
It remains unclear when the operation will begin, but it could be a matter of days. The mobilisation of reservists is the largest in months.