World
Hamas warns of ‘dangerous escalation’ after PM orders army to seize more Gaza land
Hamas has accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of a “dangerous escalation” after he ordered the army to seize more territory in the Gaza Strip, accusing Israel of violating the October 2025 ceasefire that halted two years of war.
“Any attempt to impose a new reality of occupation in Gaza is null and illegitimate,” Ismail al-Thawabta, head of the Hamas-run Gaza government media office, said Friday, adding that Netanyahu’s statement “represents a dangerous escalation.”
“In a blatant violation of all agreements, as is their usual practice, Netanyahu announced expanding control over 70 percent of the Gaza Strip, while the killing and starvation continue,” Hamas spokesman Bassem Naim told AFP.
The October deal was envisioned as part of a larger process that would see the terror group disarm and the enclave demilitarized, but progress toward that vision has stalled, as Hamas has refused to lay down its weapons and Israel has continued striking deep inside Gaza, while facing allegations that it is violating additional terms of the October agreement.
Netanyahu said Thursday that he’d ordered the Israel Defense Forces to take control of 70 percent of the Gaza Strip – well beyond the portion of the enclave that Jerusalem was allowed to temporarily continue occupying as part of the deal with Hamas.
Netanyahu acknowledged last week that Israel already holds 60% of the territory, significantly more than the roughly 53% allotted to Israel in the ceasefire deal.
That truce, which secured the release of hostages held by Hamas and other terror groups in Gaza, left Hamas in de facto control of the remainder of the Strip.
Any further reduction in space available to the more than 2 million Gaza residents, many of whom are living in tents in the tiny Palestinian territory, risks worsening already dire conditions there.
The United Nations children’s agency UNICEF warned on Friday that this would deepen the health crisis among children in the war-ravaged territory, who it said are suffering from an acute lack of food, water and hygiene.
Now “people have been crammed into around 40 percent of the space,” UNICEF spokesman Salim Oweis told reporters in Geneva, speaking from Gaza.
People there were left “sheltering among broken buildings, rubble and mounting solid waste,” he said, adding “there is no accessible space left to clear” the waste.
“The effects of this are now widely apparent: children with respiratory infections, acute watery diarrhea and more than half of all households reporting skin diseases.”
“Fleas, lice and scabies are commonplace,” Oweis said, also pointing to numerous cases of rats biting young children and even babies.
Oweis said a woman named Hind “hasn’t slept since her four-year-old daughter, Masa, was bitten by a rat during the night.”
“Like many families, they sheltered wherever they could, in their case, the second floor of a building block where sewage water leaks through the ceilings, and rodents crawl through the cracks in the building and climb the exposed pipes,” he said.
Rats are not the only menace.
Oweis said he had spoken with another woman named Amani whose seven-year-old daughter had “developed deep lesions and sores on her head, back and legs due to a bacterial infection.”
He warned that “increasing numbers of children are requiring hospitalization, all without a single fully functioning hospital across Gaza.”
The situation was “dire,” Oweis said, noting the overcrowding was already “creating more spread of diseases, straining the systems and of course cutting… services.”
If Israel takes control of even more land, he warned, that “means that we will lose access to some of the service points, but also [to] some hard to reach places [where] children and families are living.”
“This will just mean that more children will suffer,” he said
The Palestinian Authority’s foreign ministry slammed Netanyahu’s announcement as “a serious violation of the foundations of the ceasefire.”
A spokesperson for US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace said it would not have a comment on Netanyahu’s statement.
A British Foreign Office spokesperson said any further expansion of Israeli control in Gaza would be unacceptable and risk exacerbating an already dire humanitarian situation.
Fellow permanent UN Security Council member France did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A German foreign ministry spokesperson said Germany was concerned about Israeli plans to take more of Gaza and opposed a permanent division of the Palestinian territory.
For people inside Gaza, where nearly all the population had to flee their homes during the war and with most still living in temporary tents or shelters, the prospect of increased Israeli military pressure is alarming.
“We see no ceasefire or anything and they keep advancing beyond the yellow line. For how long will the world stay silent?” said Mohammed al-Jundi, a displaced man in Gaza City.
“Where do we go? To the sea? There is no space,” said Mohammed al-Shagra, 72, in Khan Younis.
