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Here’s where things stand on Friday 8 August 2025:
- Israel’s security cabinet has approved a plan by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the military occupation of Gaza City.
- The Israeli military operation reportedly involves “all Palestinian civilians” being displaced from the northern city to camps in central Gaza.
- News of the plan comes after Netanyahu said on Thursday that Israel will “take control of all of Gaza”.
- The spectre of forced mass displacement from Gaza City follows after four more people died from starvation and malnutrition across the Strip – including two children – bringing the total number of victims from Israel’s man-made famine to 197.
- Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 61,258 people and wounded 152,045. An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the October 7, 2023, attacks, and more than 200 were taken captive.
Far-right Israeli protesters block trucks carrying Gaza aid at Jordan crossing
Far-right Israeli protestors blocked trucks carrying humanitarian aid destined for Gaza for several hours on Friday morning at the Allenby Bridge, known in Jordan as the King Hussein Bridge, separating the occupied West Bank and Jordan.
A post on X with footage of the group said they were blocking the Jordanian trucks carrying much-needed supplies to Palestinians in Gaza as aid is the “oxygen of Hamas in the fight against our soldiers”.
Far-right protestors regularly impede aid trucks crossing through Israel to reach Gaza, where an ongoing starvation crisis caused by Israel’s ongoing blockade has resulted in almost 200 deaths.
Gaza City occupation plan ‘formalises’ situation that exists on the ground
Rami Khouri, a distinguished fellow at the American University of Beirut, told Al Jazeera earlier that the plan to occupy Gaza City had been expected and the operation would likely not change the situation much from what exists currently on the ground in the war-torn enclave.
“Israel controls all of Gaza, from all the borders in the air and sea. It is already totally in control of anything that comes in and out of Gaza – the very little they allow in. So this just formalises, a little bit, the nature of the Israeli presence,” Khouri told Al Jazeera.
“It means they are going to go into some of the areas where there are still dense urban conglomerations of people in Gaza City and in the centre of the Strip,” Khouri said.
The plan is not “a big difference from the situation that already exists”, he said.
“Israel controls about 80, 85 percent of all of Gaza now,” he added.
Israeli opposition leader says move to occupy Gaza City a ‘disaster’
Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid has labelled a decision by Israel’s security cabinet to back Prime Minister Netanyahu’s plan to occupy Gaza City a “disaster that will lead to many more disasters”.
Lapid said far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich had “dragged Netanyahu into a move that will take many months, lead to the deaths of hostages and soldiers, cost tens of billions for the Israeli taxpayer, and result in a diplomatic collapse”.
“This is exactly what Hamas wanted: for Israel to be trapped in the territory without a goal, without defining the picture of the day after, in a pointless occupation that no one understands where it is leading,” he said.
Australia urges Israel not to ‘go down path’ of military control of Gaza
Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong has urged Israel “not to go down this path”, after Israel’s security cabinet backed Prime Minister Netanyahu’s plan for a military takeover of Gaza City.
In a statement issued soon after the Israeli government’s announcement on Friday, Wong said the move “will only worsen the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza”.
“A two-state solution is the only pathway to secure an enduring peace – a Palestinian state and the State of Israel, living side-by-side in peace and security within internationally recognised borders,” she said.
Israel military has experience that occupation of Gaza ‘almost impossible to do’
Former US intelligence officer Glenn Carle spoke to Al Jazeera earlier about Israel’s plan to occupy Gaza City and how the Israeli military should know “better than anybody” what happened during their previous occupation of Gaza.
“It was a terrible dilemma and almost impossible to do, so I think that’s what the military is confronted with now,” Carle said, adding that some Israeli military officials have reportedly assessed that it could take up to five years to completely defeat Hamas in Gaza.
While Carle said he was surprised at such a timeline, he said that Israel’s military occupation could face an “infinite number of problems”.
“Humanitarian, civil, political, and military. Because there will be probably endless disaffected young men who – whether organised or not – will lash out,” he said.
Israel’s security cabinet adopts ‘five principles’ for ending war
As we have been reporting, Israel’s security cabinet backed Prime Minister Netanyahu’s plan to militarily occupy Gaza City and impose a siege on Hamas fighters there.
As part of the hours-long meeting on Thursday night, the cabinet also agreed in a majority vote upon “five principles” for ending its deadly assault on Gaza, according to a statement from Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office.
Those principles are:
- The disarming of Hamas.
- The return of all the captives – the living and the deceased.
- The demilitarisation of the Gaza Strip.
- Israeli security control in the Gaza Strip.
- The establishment of an alternative civil administration that is neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority.
Occupation of Gaza City seen as Israel’s ‘institutionalisation of domination’ over population
Many Palestinians, in fact, in the early hours of this morning, said the Israeli decision to occupy Gaza City is not seen as a strategic or tactical manoeuvre, but is seen as the institutionalisation of domination … that people have been enduring more than 22 months of displacement, fear and relentless bombardment.
Now their misery is about to be complicated further by Israel’s potential step to expand its ground operations to focus primarily on Gaza City, which right now holds hundreds of thousands of people who are living in makeshift tents and partially destroyed buildings and schools, UN-run clinics and shelters.
Many of those who were given the chance to return to northern Gaza did so after the former ceasefire agreement that was brokered between Hamas and Israel.
Now they are facing the same threat, which is to be forcibly displaced from their homes and towns to other parts of the Strip under the pretext of fighting Hamas and armed factions in these areas.
People say that this has been the fear … and right now it has become a looming reality that Israel will control Gaza City.
Netanyahu’s plan to fully occupy Gaza is both cynical and stupid
Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara says Prime Minister Netanyahu is facing an unprecedented struggle in Gaza.
Despite massive destruction and displacement, he has failed to declare victory, enforce a ceasefire, or offer an exit plan.
Bishara suggests that Netanyahu is cornered – if he withdraws, Hamas could quickly return to power; if he stays, he faces growing dissent from Israeli military leaders opposed to a prolonged occupation of the Palestinian territory.
A recap of recent developments
Here’s what you need to know:
- Israel’s security cabinet has approved Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to militarily occupy Gaza City and impose a siege on Hamas fighters there.
- Netanyahu’s office said in a statement early on Friday that “the [Israeli military] will prepare to take control of Gaza City while providing humanitarian aid to the civilian population outside the combat zones”.
- Axios reporter Barak Ravid, who first reported the plan had been approved, quoted an unnamed Israeli official as saying the operation will involve the forced displacement of “all Palestinian civilians from Gaza City to the central camps and other areas by October 7”.
- Four more people died of hunger-related deaths in Gaza, bringing the total number of fatalities caused by Israel’s brutal siege to 197 people, including 96 children.
- The WHO says about 12,000 children in Gaza under the age of five were acutely malnourished at the end of July, the highest number on record.
- Lebanon’s government approved a US-backed proposal to disarm Hezbollah by the end of the year. Hezbollah officials said it would not disarm before Israeli forces, still occupying Lebanese territory, left.
Welcome to our live coverage
Hello, and welcome to our live coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza.
Stay with us for the latest news, reactions and analyses.
You can find all our updates from Thursday, August 7, here.
