The Israeli military operation is expanding to seize “large areas” of the Gaza Strip, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on April 2.
He said the offensive was “expanding to crush and clean the area of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure and capture large areas that will be added to the security zones of the state of Israel,” Katz said in a written statement.
He called on Gaza to expel Hamas, the terrorist group that has controlled it since 2006, and free the remaining 59 hostages who were kidnapped during Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
Israel has confirmed that at least 35 of them are dead, leaving a maximum of 24 still alive.
Katz also said there would be a large-scale evacuation of the population from contested areas.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel is also establishing a new security corridor.
The Morag Corridor will run between the Israeli frontier and the sea between Rafah and Khan Yunis in southern Gaza. It bears the name of a Jewish settlement between the two cities that was evacuated in 2005.
“This will be the second Philadelphi, an additional Philadephi Corridor,” Netanyahu said in a statement released by the government, referring to the security strip Israel established along Gaza’s frontier with Egypt to stop Hamas’s arms smuggling and terrorist movements.
During the war’s first 15 months of fighting, Israel also established the Netzarim Corridor, cutting off Gaza City and the northern Strip from the rest of Gaza.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has reasserted control of it during the current round of fighting.
“We are now dividing the Strip and increasing the pressure step by step so that they will give us our hostages. And as long as they do not give them to us, the pressure will increase until they do,” Netanyahu said.
According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the defense establishment said that the plan was concealed until the statement was made to protect the ground forces carrying it out.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum criticized the decision and expressed concerns about the hostages’ safety.
It said in a statement, according to The Times of Israel, that families “were horrified to wake up this morning to the defense minister’s announcement that the military operation in Gaza would be expanded for the purpose of ‘capturing extensive territory.’”
“Has it been decided to sacrifice the hostages for the sake of ’territorial gains?’
“Instead of securing the release of the hostages through a deal and ending the war, the Israeli government is sending more soldiers into Gaza to fight in the same areas where battles have already taken place repeatedly.”
Palestinian media reported a large wave of strikes on Rafah and Khan Yunis the prior night, and later that ground forces were advancing on Rafah, according to The Times of Israel.
The IDF earlier ordered the evacuation of Rafah and most of the southern end of the Gaza Strip.
The IDF and Shin Bet announced they had carried out a strike on Hamas terror operatives in the Jabaliya area in Gaza’s north.
Palestinian media said at least eight were dead in the strike targeting what it said was a clinic for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the U.N. agency handling Palestinian relief.
