Starving Palestinians in Gaza are asking themselves what comes next in their endless suffering after Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet approved a full-scale invasion plan earlier this month.

In early August, Israel’s security cabinet approved a plan to seize Gaza City, billed as a step “to defeat Hamas” and “conclude the war.”

The plan’s five goals are to disarm Hamas, free hostages, demilitarise Gaza, impose Israeli security control and install “an alternative civil administration” to both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.

Much of Gaza has been under Israeli occupation for nearly two years, following Hamas’s October 7th attack.

According to UN estimates, about eighty-six percent of Palestinians in Gaza live under military zones or evacuation orders. Even Israeli officials acknowledge that they control roughly three-quarters of the territory.

Then, what does this “new” occupation plan actually mean?

The plan would mean sending ground troops into the remaining twenty-five percent of Gaza that has not been devastated, areas where much of the enclave’s 2 million people have taken shelter.

Israel is preparing a two-phase offensive to capture Gaza City, which would involve evacuating around 1 million residents, half the population, as a “temporary step” to set up civilian infrastructure in the centre of the enclave.

Netanyahu has told the media that he wants a “security perimeter”, and not necessarily govern Gaza City.

More than 60,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been killed in relentless Israeli aerial and ground assaults. Yet the Netanyahu government has failed to free the hostages held by Hamas. 

Nor has it met its parroted goal: to eliminate the Palestinian resistance group, which retains command over an extensive tunnel network beneath the enclave.

Large parts of the Israeli public demands that the government strike a deal with the group and end the war. But Netanyahu’s extremist coalition partners threaten to bring down his government if genocidal war against Palestinians stops.

In the face of growing international criticism against the Netanyahu government’s brutal conduct in Gaza, the Israeli prime minister used different tactics to distract global attention to starving Palestinian children by launching attacks against Iran and intervening in neighbouring Syria’s internal affairs through the Druze community. 

Pressure tactic or trap?

Analysts suggest the new occupation plan, quietly backed by the Trump administration, of displacing nearly 2 million Palestinians from Gaza to other countries, might be used as a pressure tactic on Hamas to reach a hostage deal.

“It is not even definitively clear that whatever is announced is what will actually play out. The recently completed Gideon’s Chariots military operation proved less intensive than described ahead of time,” wrote David Horovitz, an Israeli writer and the founding editor of the Times of Israel. 

“And the ambiguous description of imminent full kibbush, a term with West Bank echoes, could conceivably be intended as a pressure tactic on Hamas,” Horovitz added. 

The Hebrew word kibbush, used by the government to describe the occupation, can mean anything from temporary occupation to opening the land for illegal Jewish settlement.

Uncertainty also surrounds the post-invasion phase.

Netanyahu has referred to “Arab forces” which will take over Gaza from Israel, but it’s not clear who they are. Some say they might be Jordanians or Egyptians, the two Arab nations, who normalised relations with Israel decades ago. 

Many former Israeli officials and international military experts have long criticised Netanyahu's Gaza war due to the lack of its political objectives.

And reportedly Netanyahu’s new army chief of staff Eyal Zamir has also recently joined those critics sternly warning the prime minister on the new invasion plan: “You’re going to create a trap in Gaza”?

Why Gaza City?

Though Netanyahu once vowed to take the entire enclave, the strategy now centres on Gaza’s largest city and urban centre. Out of Gaza’s 2.1 million people, 740,000 of them live in Gaza City located in the northern part of the Palestinian enclave. 

Although surrounded by Israeli-controlled land, Gaza City itself is not under full occupation. Most Palestinians live in such pockets, which remain outside direct Israeli control.

Israeli officials have explicitly named Gaza City as a priority, suggesting that the government seeks to extend its grip over areas it has yet to fully dominate.

By launching a full-scale invasion on Gaza City, Israelis might aim to displace a large native population from areas under relatively Palestinian control, forcing Hamas to free Israeli hostages, according to Horovitz.

Other experts also see Israel’s Gaza City plans as a starting point of “a full-scale takeover” of Gaza. 

Right after Israeli disclosure of the new occupation plan, Hamas warned of “fierce resistance” to the move, describing it as a “war crime.” 

Israel and its allies on the new “criminal adventure” which “will cost it dearly and will not be an easy journey", they said in a statement.