Israel minister hints at destroying Gaza City as UN declares famine

Israel’s defence minister warned on Friday that Gaza’s largest city would be destroyed unless Hamas yields to Israel’s terms, as the world’s leading authority on food crises said the city was gripped by famine from fighting and blockade.

A day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would authorise the military to mount a major operation to seize Gaza City, Defence Minister Israel Katz warned that the enclave’s largest city could “turn into Rafah and Beit Hanoun,” areas reduced to rubble earlier in the war.

“The gates of hell will soon open on the heads of Hamas’ murderers and rapists in Gaza — until they agree to Israel’s conditions for ending the war,” Katz wrote in a post on X.

He restated Israel’s cease-fire demands: the release of all hostages and Hamas’s complete disarmament. Hamas has said it would release captives in exchange for ending the war, but rejects disarmament without the creation of a Palestinian state.

Netanyahu on Thursday said he had instructed officials “to begin immediate negotiations” to release hostages and end the war on acceptable terms — Israel’s first public response to the latest ceasefire proposal. With ground troops already active in strategic areas, the wide-scale operation in Gaza City could start within days.

The city and surrounding areas are officially suffering from famine, and it will likely spread, a global hunger monitor determined, an assessment that will escalate pressure on Israel to allow more aid into the Palestinian territory.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system said 5,14,000 people — close to a quarter of Palestinians in Gaza — are experiencing famine, with the number due to rise to 6,41,000 by the end of September.

Some 2,80,000 of those people are in a northern region covering Gaza City — known as Gaza governorate — which the IPC said was in famine following nearly two years of war between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas.

It was the first time the IPC has recorded famine outside of Africa, and it predicted that famine conditions would spread to the central and southern areas of Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis by the end of next month.