Is­rael ap­proved plans Mon­day to cap­ture the en­tire Gaza Strip and re­main in the Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ry for an un­spec­i­fied amount of time, two Is­raeli of­fi­cials said, a move that, if im­ple­ment­ed, would vast­ly ex­pand Is­rael’s op­er­a­tions in Gaza and like­ly bring fierce in­ter­na­tion­al op­po­si­tion.

Is­raeli Cab­i­net min­is­ters ap­proved the plan in an ear­ly morn­ing vote, hours af­ter the Is­raeli mil­i­tary chief said the army was call­ing up tens of thou­sands of re­serve sol­diers.

The new plan, which the of­fi­cials said was meant to help Is­rael achieve its war aims of de­feat­ing Hamas and free­ing hostages held in Gaza, al­so calls for hun­dreds of thou­sands of Pales­tini­ans to move to Gaza’s south — in what would like­ly amount to their forcible dis­place­ment and ex­ac­er­bate an al­ready dire hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis.

A third per­son, a de­fense of­fi­cial, said the new plan wouldn’t be­gin un­til af­ter U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump wraps up his ex­pect­ed vis­it to the Mid­dle East this month — al­low­ing for the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Is­rael might agree to a cease­fire in the mean­time. All three of­fi­cials spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty be­cause they were dis­cussing mil­i­tary plans.

Is­rael with­drew from Gaza in 2005 af­ter a decades-long oc­cu­pa­tion and then im­posed a block­ade on the ter­ri­to­ry along with Egypt. Cap­tur­ing and po­ten­tial­ly oc­cu­py­ing the ter­ri­to­ry again for an in­def­i­nite pe­ri­od would not on­ly fur­ther dash hopes for Pales­tin­ian state­hood, it would em­bed Is­rael in­side a pop­u­la­tion that is deeply hos­tile to it and raise ques­tions about how Is­rael plans to gov­ern the ter­ri­to­ry, es­pe­cial­ly at a time when it is con­sid­er­ing how to im­ple­ment U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s vi­sion to take over Gaza.

Since Is­rael end­ed a cease­fire with the Hamas mil­i­tant group in mid-March, Is­rael has un­leashed fierce strikes on the ter­ri­to­ry that have killed hun­dreds. It has cap­tured swaths of ter­ri­to­ry and now con­trols rough­ly 50% of Gaza. Be­fore the truce end­ed, Is­rael halt­ed all hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid in­to the ter­ri­to­ry, in­clud­ing food, fu­el and wa­ter, set­ting off what is be­lieved to the be the worst hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis in near­ly 19 months of war.

The war be­gan when Hamas-led mil­i­tants at­tacked south­ern Is­rael, killing 1,200 peo­ple and tak­ing about 250 hostages. Is­rael says 59 cap­tives re­main in Gaza, al­though about 35 are be­lieved to be dead.

Is­rael’s of­fen­sive has dis­placed more than 90% of Gaza’s pop­u­la­tion and, Pales­tin­ian health of­fi­cials say, killed more than 52,000 peo­ple there, many of them women and chil­dren. The of­fi­cials do not dis­tin­guish be­tween com­bat­ants and civil­ians in their count.

The Pales­tin­ian Health Min­istry in Gaza said Mon­day the bod­ies of 32 peo­ple killed by Is­raeli strikes have been brought to hos­pi­tals over the past 24 hours.

Is­rael is try­ing to ratch­et up pres­sure on Hamas

The Is­raeli of­fi­cials said the plan in­clud­ed the “cap­tur­ing of the strip and the hold­ing of ter­ri­to­ries.” The plan would al­so seek to pre­vent Hamas from dis­trib­ut­ing hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid, a role that Is­rael says strength­ens the group’s rule in Gaza. It al­so ac­cus­es Hamas of keep­ing the aid for it­self, with­out pro­vid­ing ev­i­dence. Aid work­ers de­ny there is a sig­nif­i­cant di­ver­sion of aid to mil­i­tants, say­ing the U.N. strict­ly mon­i­tors dis­tri­b­u­tion.

The of­fi­cials said Is­rael was in touch with sev­er­al coun­tries about Trump’s plan to take over Gaza and re­lo­cate its pop­u­la­tion, un­der what Is­rael has termed “vol­un­tary em­i­gra­tion.” That pro­pos­al has drawn wide­spread con­dem­na­tion, in­clud­ing from Is­rael’s al­lies in Eu­rope, and rights groups have warned it could be a war crime un­der in­ter­na­tion­al law.

Hamas of­fi­cials didn’t re­turn calls and mes­sages seek­ing com­ment on the plans.

For weeks, Is­rael has been try­ing to ratch­et up pres­sure on Hamas to get the group to agree to its terms in the cease­fire ne­go­ti­a­tions. But the mea­sures do not ap­pear to have moved Hamas away from its ne­go­ti­at­ing po­si­tions.

The pre­vi­ous cease­fire was meant to lead the sides to ne­go­ti­ate an end to the war, but that has re­mained elu­sive. Is­rael says it won’t agree to end the war un­til Hamas’ gov­ern­ing and mil­i­tary ca­pa­bil­i­ties are dis­man­tled. Hamas, mean­while, has sought an agree­ment that winds down the war with­out agree­ing to dis­arm.

Is­rael’s ex­pan­sion an­nounce­ment an­gered fam­i­lies of hostages who fear that any ex­ten­sion of the con­flict en­dan­gers their loved ones. The Hostages and Miss­ing Fam­i­lies Fo­rum, which sup­ports fam­i­lies, urged Is­rael’s de­ci­sion-mak­ers to pri­or­i­tize the hostages and se­cure a deal quick­ly.

At a Knes­set com­mit­tee meet­ing Mon­day, Einav Zan­gauk­er, whose son Matan is be­ing held hostage, called on sol­diers “not to re­port for re­serve du­ty for moral and eth­i­cal rea­sons.”

Some re­servists have in­di­cat­ed they will refuse to serve in a war they in­creas­ing­ly view as po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed.

Is­rael wants to pre­vent Hamas from han­dling aid

The de­fense of­fi­cial said the plan would “sep­a­rate” Hamas from the aid by us­ing pri­vate firms and by us­ing spec­i­fied ar­eas se­cured by the Is­raeli mil­i­tary. The of­fi­cial added that Pales­tini­ans would be screened to pre­vent Hamas from ac­cess­ing the aid.

Ac­cord­ing to a memo cir­cu­lat­ed among aid groups and seen by The As­so­ci­at­ed Press, Is­rael told the Unit­ed Na­tions that it will use pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies to con­trol aid dis­tri­b­u­tion in Gaza. The U.N., in a state­ment Sun­day, said it would not par­tic­i­pate in the plan as pre­sent­ed, say­ing it vi­o­lates its core prin­ci­ples.

The memo sum­ma­rized a meet­ing be­tween the Is­raeli de­fense body in charge of co­or­di­nat­ing aid to Gaza, called CO­GAT, and the UN. It was writ­ten by a group briefed on the meet­ing and sent to aid or­ga­ni­za­tions on Sun­day.

Ac­cord­ing to the memo, un­der CO­GAT’s plan, all aid will en­ter Gaza through the Kerem Shalom cross­ing, on ap­prox­i­mate­ly 60 trucks dai­ly, and be dis­trib­uted di­rect­ly to peo­ple. Some 500 trucks en­tered Gaza every day be­fore the war.

The memo said that fa­cial recog­ni­tion will be used to iden­ti­fy Pales­tini­ans at lo­gis­tics hubs and text mes­sage alerts will no­ti­fy peo­ple in the area that they can col­lect aid.

CO­GAT did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to a re­quest for com­ment.

The UN ac­cus­es Is­rael of want­i­ng to con­trol aid as a ‘pres­sure tac­tic’

The U.N. said the plan would leave large parts of the pop­u­la­tion, in­clud­ing the most vul­ner­a­ble, with­out sup­plies. It said the plan “ap­pears de­signed to re­in­force con­trol over life-sus­tain­ing items as a pres­sure tac­tic – as part of a mil­i­tary strat­e­gy.”

Aid groups have said they are op­posed to us­ing any armed or uni­formed per­son­nel to dis­trib­ute aid that could po­ten­tial­ly in­tim­i­date Pales­tini­ans or put them at risk, and they fierce­ly crit­i­cized the new plan.

Is­raeli of­fi­cials “want to ma­nip­u­late and mil­i­ta­rize all aid to civil­ians, forc­ing us to de­liv­er sup­plies through hubs de­signed by the Is­raeli mil­i­tary, once the gov­ern­ment agrees to re-open cross­ings,” the Jan Ege­land, Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Nor­we­gian Refugee Coun­cil, said on X, say­ing the group wouldn’t par­tic­i­pate.

Ear­li­er this month, the AP ob­tained notes sum­ma­riz­ing var­i­ous Is­raeli pro­pos­als on aid dis­tri­b­u­tion and aid groups’ con­cerns about them. In those doc­u­ments, the groups ex­pressed fears that Pales­tini­ans would be re­quired to re­trieve aid from a small num­ber of sites, forc­ing fam­i­lies to move to get as­sis­tance and al­so putting their safe­ty at risk if large crowds gath­ered at the sites. —TEL AVIV, Is­rael (AP)

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Sto­ry by TIA GOLD­EN­BERG and SAM MED­NICK | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Sam Med­nick re­port­ed from Jerusalem. As­so­ci­at­ed Press re­porters Wafaa Shu­rafa in Deir al-Bal­ah, Gaza Strip; Samy Magdy in Cairo; and Josef Fe­d­er­man con­tributed to this re­port.