Netanyahu directs army to occupy 70 percent of Gaza

When asked about taking 100 percent of Gaza, the Israeli prime minister said, ‘First 70 percent. We’ll start with that’

News Desk, MAY 28, 2026, https://thecradle.co/articles/netanyahu-calls-for-army-to-occupy-70-percent-of-gaza

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he has given directives for the Israeli military to take control of 70 percent of the Gaza Strip, Israel’s Channel 12 reported on 28 May.

“At this point, we are fully in control of 60 percent of the territory of the Gaza Strip … and my directive is to get to … 70 percent,” Netanyahu said in Hebrew during a conference held by the Ein Prat Leadership Academy.

During the speech, one audience member shouted that Israel should take “100 percent” of Gaza. Netanyahu responded, saying that “We’re going in order,” suggesting this was the long-term goal of his government.

“First 70 percent,” he says, “we’ll start with that.”

Last week, Netanyahu publicly acknowledged reports that the Israeli military currently occupies 60 percent of the territory in the strip, significantly more than the 53 percent allowed under the terms of last September’s ceasefire with Hamas.

Ministers in Netanyahu’s government say they want to completely occupy Gaza and expel its nearly 2 million Palestinian inhabitants to make way for Jewish settlement of the strip.

Jewish settler leader and Israeli minister Orit Strock called the months after the Hamas attack of 7 October a “time of miracles,” because it gave Israel the pretext to conquer the strip.

Shortly after 7 October, Netanyahu called for committing genocide against Palestinians, comparing them to the Amalekite people, who were exterminated, including women and children, by the ancient Israelites according to the account in the Book of Samuel in the Jewish holy book, the Torah.

Israel has killed over 72,000 Palestinians, the majority women and children, since the start of the war over two years ago. Thousands more are missing and presumed lost under the rubble.

According to satellite imagery analysis, approximately 81 percent of all structures in the Gaza Strip have been damaged due to Israeli bombing as of October last year.

As a result, nearly 1.9 million Palestinians – about 90 percent of Gaza’s population – are internally displaced and homeless. Many live in tents or make-shift shelters. Conditions remain dire with severe shortages of food, medicine, and clean water and sanitation that will continue to cause indirect deaths long after the Israeli violence in Gaza ends.

In April, Reuters reported that rats and parasites are spreading through Gaza’s tent camps, “biting children’s fingers and toes as they sleep, gnawing through people’s few remaining treasured possessions, and spreading disease.”

The news agency spoke with Khalil Al-Mashharawi, who said that a rat bit the hand and toes of his 3-year-old son and that he himself was bitten.

“They strike in our sleep,” said Mashharawi, 26, who lives with his wife and children in the ruins of their house in Al-Tuffah neighborhood in northern Gaza.

“They may disappear for a day or two before they strike again, (forcing) their way under the tiles of the floor of the house.”