SAEDNEWS: Israel’s war minister has threatened to 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, Press TV reported.
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.
