Palestinians fleeing Israeli bombardment drive vehicles carrying their belongings on a main axis in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip.AFP
In a statement, Hamas said that Netanyahu bears full responsibility for the collapse of the deal and called on the international community and mediators to pressure him into halting the offensive and returning to negotiations.
The group stated it was "doing everything possible to keep the occupation's captives alive, but the random Zionist (Israeli) bombardment is endangering their lives."
It also accused Netanyahu of misleading the families of Israeli captives by claiming a military operation could bring them back alive.
"Every time the occupation attempts to retrieve its captives by force, it ends up bringing them back in coffins", it said.
Hamas remains firm in its demand for a permanent ceasefire, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, and the entry of humanitarian aid as conditions for releasing Israeli captives. These terms align with the phased implementation of a ceasefire agreement brokered by mediators Egypt, Qatar and US—an agreement Israel violated last week when it resumed its military offensive on Gaza.
On 19 March- one day after Israel resumed war on Gaza- the Israeli government has approved the return of the extremist national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who resigned on 19 January in protest of the Gaza ceasefire agreement reached with Hamas.
While in the cabinet, he repeatedly attacked the army and Netanyahu over the conduct of the war in Gaza, opposing any deal with Hamas and threatening at times to bring down the government if it signed a deal to end the war without destroying Hamas.
Together with a fellow extremist, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, he called for occupying Gaza and re-establishing the Jewish settlements there, which Israel abandoned in 2005.
Occupying Gaza plans
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that increasing pressure on Hamas will involve "seizing lands in Gaza", along with 'other measures' he did not specify.
"We must achieve a complete victory to secure Israel’s future and bring back the 'hostages,'" Netanyahu told the Knesset.
He added that as long as Hamas refuses to release the captives, Israel will escalate its pressure, including territorial takeovers in Gaza.
The Financial Times reported on Tuesday that Israel’s military has drawn up plans to reconquer Gaza, paving the way for a long-running occupation of the besieged enclave.
The proposal — yet to be approved by Israel’s security cabinet — was formulated by the new Israel Defense Forces chief of staff with the unofficial backing of far-right ministers who have long demanded drastically harsher tactics to fight the militant group, several people briefed on the plans told the Financial Times .
According to the plan, the Isaeli army would call up several combat divisions to reinvade and subdue Hamas, take control of wide swaths of the enclave and force the territory’s 2.2mn population into a small, so-called humanitarian zone along the Mediterranean coast.
The military would then administer Gaza, these officials said, in effect reoccupying the febrile territory 20 years after it pulled out. Israel occupied the enclave for nearly four decades until 2005, after capturing it in the 1967 war.
Such a plan would uproot millions of Palestinian civilians and corral them into an even smaller stretch of barren land, dependent on food aid to survive. It would also risk sparking a long insurgency against Israeli troops, the FT said.
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