Israel’s security cabinet has approved the expansion of military operations in Gaza, including the occupation of the Palestinian territory, an official said Monday, after the army called up tens of thousands of reservists for the offensive.

Sources told Reuters and the Associated Press that the new operation, dubbed “Gideon’s Chariots,” would not begin until after Trump’s planned visit to Israel next week, during which the Netanyahu government hopes he will endorse it.

For its part, the coalition representing the majority of the families of the hostages held by Hamas accused Netanyahu of endangering their loved ones. In a statement, they declared, “The expansion of military operations puts all the hostages in grave danger.”

Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, and his continued power, depend heavily on the support of far-right parties that have long called for the reoccupation of Gaza, from which Israel withdrew in 2005 after decades of occupation.

This is why the Netanyahu government and its far-right allies want to advance this operation, which is nothing more than a colonization process in the Gaza Strip that includes the establishment of Israeli militarized zones, the displacement of the Palestinian population to the south, and the total occupation of their territory. In other words, they want to further advance the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians as part of the genocide they have been carrying out since October 202. This plan also falls on the anniversary of the Nakba (catastrophe in Arabic), which included murders, displacements, and ethnic cleansing to artificially establish the State of Israel on the historic Palestinian territory in 1948.

This comes as the United Nations and aid organizations have repeatedly warned of a humanitarian catastrophe on the ground, with famine looming again after more than two months of a total Israeli blockade.

The plan, approved by the cabinet late Sunday, includes maintaining control over parts of the besieged Gaza Strip, according to Bezalel Smotrich, finance minister and leader of the far-right Religious Zionist Party.

Smotrich was even more brutal, saying there would be no withdrawal from areas controlled by Israel in Gaza “when the ground incursion begins,” not even in exchange for the captured soldiers.

The Israeli daily Kan reported that Security Minister Zeev Elkin said that instead of launching attacks on specific areas and then abandoning them as the military has done until now, Israeli forces will now hold the territories they seize until Hamas is defeated or agrees to disarm and leave Gaza.

The Israeli offensive marks a strategic shift toward a prolonged occupation, a possibility the Israeli government had so far avoided. Official sources indicated that the plan is designed for “months of continuous combat” and does not rule out a temporary military administration in Gaza after “the defeat of Hamas.” However, this “defeat of Hamas” is one of the strategic objectives that Israel failed to achieve in the first phase, during the previous year and a half of attacks, and which instead ended in open genocide that claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians and the almost total destruction of the Strip’s infrastructure.

Israel’s genocide in Gaza has claimed the lives of 52,567 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured another 118,610 since October 7, 2023.

At least 2,459 Palestinians have been killed and another 6,569 injured since Israel unilaterally broke the ceasefire on March 18 of this year.Originally published in La Izquierda Diario on May 5.