Netanyahu says he directed Israeli military to take over 70% of Gaza
By Dana Karni and Tal Shalev
(CNN) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that he has directed Israel’s military to take over 70% of Gaza’s territory.
During an interview at a conference in the occupied West Bank, Netanyahu said that Israel is “tightening” its grip on Hamas. “We are now in 60% of the territory of the Gaza Strip. We were at 50%. We moved to 60%,” he said. “My directive is to move to — take it step by step — first of all 70. Let’s start with that.” As Netanyahu spoke, the audience called for him to take over all of Gaza’s territory.
In late April, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) issued maps to international aid groups that showed the military already controlling approximately 64% of Gaza.
The seizure of more of Gaza would force approximately 2 million Palestinians into a shrinking fraction of the coastal enclave’s shattered territory.
Under a October 2025 ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, Israeli forces withdrew to a demarcation line known as the “yellow line” that left them in roughly 53% of Gaza.
On Tuesday, Hamas accused Israel of moving the line, saying this “constitutes an explicit and ongoing undermining of the ceasefire agreement, a serious violation of its provisions, and an exposed attempt to impose new facts on the ground by force, with the aim of entrenching military control over the Strip and undermining any real chance of stabilizing the situation or making de-escalation efforts succeed.”
Both Israel and Hamas are supposed to be abiding by the terms of the US-brokered ceasefire agreement, which went into effect in October. But progress on the plan, which was promoted by President Donald Trump, has stalled, risking a scenario in which Gaza’s territory becomes permanently divided.
Nickolay Mladenov, a Bulgarian diplomat who serves as the official in charge of implementing the agreement, warned earlier this month that without progress, the yellow line could turn “into a fence or wall, a permanent separation of Gaza.”
Mladenov acknowledged a reality on the ground in Gaza in which “civilians are still being killed” and “families live in fear” of Israeli airstrikes.
Israel has repeatedly carried out strikes in Gaza since the ceasefire, accusing Hamas of violating it by rearming and rebuilding its forces. Those strikes have killed more than 850 people in Gaza since the ceasefire began, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Public Health. Earlier this month, Israel assassinated Izz al-Din al-Haddad, the leader of Hamas’ military wing. Eleven days later, Israel assassinated his successor in a subsequent strike.
“We vowed to eliminate everyone who led the October 7 massacre, and that is what will be done: They are all condemned to death everywhere,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Thursday on social media.
Hamas has also refused to disarm or decommission its weaponry, Mladenov said, a key element of the ceasefire plan upon which much of the future of Gaza rests. Israeli forces are supposed to gradually withdraw from occupied territory in Gaza after Hamas disarms and when an international security force secures parts of the enclave.
Though some countries have signaled a willingness to contribute to the security force, there is no clear timeline for its deployment. And in the absence of progress on the ceasefire agreement, Israel has gradually seized more of Gaza, entrenching its hold on the devastated territory.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
