By Dana Karni and Mohammed Tawfeeq, CNN
The Israel Defense Forces (FDI) announced this Saturday that will mobilize thousands of reservists in the next few days, in what seems to be an expansion of their offensive in Gaza while the conversations destined to ensure a cessation of fire stagnates.
The call follows the reports that the Chief of Staff of the FDI, Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, presented a plan to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Minister of Defense, Israel Katz, to intensify the pressure on the Palestinian extremist group Hamas.
The Israeli public media, Kan 11, reported that Zamir’s plan included evacuating the Palestinian civilians of the North and Center of Gaza before the expanded operations in those areas, reflecting tactics used earlier this year in Rafah, in southern Gaza.
Citing unidentified officials, Kan 11 said that the Netanyahu security cabinet was expected to approve the plan on Sunday.
The news has generated concern among the families of the 59 hostages that are still in the hands of Hamas in Gaza.
In what he described as a so -called “urgent and sincere”, the headquarters of the Hostage and Missing Families Forum warned on Saturday that “any escalation in the fighting will put the hostages, both the living and the deceased, in immediate danger.”
“The vast majority of the Israeli population considers the return of hostages as the highest moral priority of the nation,” he added.
Negotiations to ensure the release of the remaining hostages have been stagnant for weeks.
The conversations mediated by Egypt and Qatar have collapsed repeatedly. Hamas demands a cessation of permanent fire and the total withdrawal of Israel, while Israel has accused Hamas of rejecting “reasonable offers.”
The hope of a diplomatic resolution seemed even more fading over the weekend when Netanyahu accused the Qatari mediators of “playing on both sides” in the negotiations and called the Gulf state to “decide if it is on the side of civilization or on the side of the barbarism of Hamas”, stating that Israel is fighting “a fair war with just means” in Gaza.
It is not clear what motivated Netanyahu’s statement, but the statement follows reports in the Israeli media that Qatar had pressed Hamas to reject an Egyptian proposal for a fire cessation agreement.
Qatar dismissed the statement on Sunday, qualifying the accusation as a distortion of his diplomatic efforts, and accused Israel of using humanitarian aid as a “political coercion tool” while an Israeli total blockade of the deliveries of help to the Palestinian enclave enters its third month. “Is this really the model of ‘civilization’ that is being promoted?”, Wrote its spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Majed Al Ansari, in an X publication.
“A legitimate question must be raised: did the releases of no less than 138 hostages be achieved through the so -called ‘fair’ military operations, or through the same mediation that is now criticized and unjustly criticized?”
On Thursday, Netanyahu explicitly declared for the first time that defeating Israel’s enemies was more important than achieving the liberation of the remaining hostages, in statements that caused the reaction of the representatives of their families. Previously, the defeat of Hamas and the liberation of hostages as the main objectives of the Israel War in Gaza had described.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister’s office announced on Saturday that he was rescheduing Netanyahu’s visit to Azerbaijan from May 7 to 11 “for a later date.”
Citing an “intense diplomatic and security calendar,” he said that the change occurred after “developments in Gaza and Syria.”
The-CNN-Wire
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