By SheerPost-Dave DeCamp / Antiwar.com-May 7, 2025  

The Israeli government has approved plans to expand the genocidal war on Gaza that Israeli officials say will lead to the full Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian territory. The plan involves capturing more territory in Gaza, expanding the so-called “buffer zone” where the IDF has demolished virtually every structure, and forcibly displacing Palestinian civilians to move them all to a small area of southern Gaza.

Axios later reported that the Israeli plan involves flattening every single building that remains in Gaza, forcing the entire civilian population into one single area, and pressuring them to leave as part of an ethnic cleansing plan, though it’s unclear what countries are willing to take them.

An Israeli official told Haaretz that the plan is different from previous Israeli military operations because it will lead to “the occupation of territory and a sustained Israeli presence in Gaza.”

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Israel is “finally going to occupy the Gaza Strip” and that it was “no longer afraid of the word ‘occupation.’”

Smotrich said that once the new offensive starts, nothing will stop Israel’s plans to “conquer” Gaza, not even Hamas releasing all the Israeli hostages.

“There will be no retreat from the territories we have conquered, not even in exchange for hostages,” Smotrich said. “Once we occupy and stay, we can talk about sovereignty. But I did not demand that this be included among the goals of the war. First, we will defeat Hamas and prevent it from existing.”

Both Smotrich and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have made clear that freeing the hostages is not their priority and that the ultimate goal is ethnic cleansing, which they frame as “voluntary migration.”

A group representing the family members of Israeli captives held in Gaza slammed the new plan for Gaza. The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said the plan should be named the “Smotrich-Netanyahu plan” to “give up on the hostages and Israel’s security and national resilience.”

According to AFP, an Israeli official said Israel would allow a “window” to reach a hostage deal with Hamas during President Trump’s visit to the region, which will begin on May 13, before launching the offensive. But a deal is unlikely since Israel has repeatedly rejected an offer from Hamas for all the captives to be freed in exchange for a permanent truce.

The Axios report said that President Trump isn’t pushing for a ceasefire deal and has “effectively given Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a green light to do as he sees fit.”

The approval of the plan to take over Gaza comes after over two months of a total Israeli blockade on the Strip, and as children are starving to death due to the lack of aid. According to CBS News, the plan includes a mechanism to have a private security company distribute aid in Gaza, but there’s no indication it will be implemented soon or that it would provide the relief needed to stave off a massive famine.

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Dave DeCamp

Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave - Author Site

‘Inhumanity’: IDF Soldiers Drop Blue Bomb in Gaza as Part of Gender Reveal Celebration

By SheerPost-Julia Conley / Common Dreams- May 6, 2025  

As thousands of Palestinian children across Gaza face starvation two months into Israel’s most recent complete blockade on humanitarian aid into the enclave, members of the Israel Defense Forces allegedly used one recent attack on a residential area as a prop in their celebration of one soldier’s impending fatherhood.

In a video posted to social media on May 5—with the soldiers reportedly sharing it on their own accounts—the IDF members can be heard cheering and laughing as a building in a civilian area is leveled by an Israeli bombing, leaving blue smoke rising from the rubble in the distance.

The smoke signified that the soldier’s expected child is a boy—and the troops, members of the military that’s often called by Israel and its allies “the most moral army in the world,” gave no indication that they were thinking of any civilians who could have been in the bombed area as they laughed loudly at the “gender reveal.”

“We have reached the stage of genocidal fervor where new Israeli life is literally celebrated through the destruction of Palestinian life,” said Heidi Matthews, a law professor at York University in Toronto.

Another observer, Daniel Lambert—manager of the outspoken Irish hip hop trio Kneecap, which has condemned Israel’s bombardment of Gaza—called the video “the most depraved thing you’ll ever see.”

“As other babies starve they welcome their kid with a war crime and cheers,” Lambert said.

According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, the death toll in Gaza has surged past 52,000 since Israel began attacking the enclave—and blocking the entry of nearly all humanitarian aid—in October 2023 in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack.

Israel and its top international military funder, the U.S., have repeatedly insisted that the IDF is targeting Hamas—even as reporting has revealed mass graves filled with women and children, some of whom appeared to have been buried alive or with their hands tied behind their backs; and attacks like those that killed 15 paramedics who were in clearly marked vehicles and seven World Central Kitchen workers who were distributing food to Palestinians.

Israel has killed more than 17,400 children in Gaza—and many more are presumed dead and buried under rubble.

Five out of every 100 children in the enclave have been orphaned, and Israel’s bombardment has left Gaza with the highest number of child amputees in the world—and with dwindling capacity to care for them as repeated bombings and the blockade have led to the near-total collapse of the healthcare system.

Despite the growing consensus among international rights groups that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza, just 94 out of 535 voting members of the U.S. Congress have demanded a permanent cease-fire in the enclave—and speaking out against Israel’s attacks has proven dangerous in the U.S., with numerous foreign students detained and threatened with deportation for organizing protests.

“While the Israeli government slaughters and starves Palestinian babies in Gaza—with the full support of our own government—its occupation forces are now blowing up buildings to stage ‘gender reveal’ events in celebration of the birth of their own children,” said the Council on American Islamic Relations. “The inhumanity of such acts clearly demonstrates once again the brutal nature of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and on the Palestinian people. The Israeli government must be stopped.”