JERUSALEM: Zionist Defense Minister Israel Katz has threatened to annex parts of the Gaza Strip unless Hamas militants release the remaining captives held in the war-battered Palestinian territory. The warning came as Zionist entity pressed the renewed assault it launched on Tuesday, shattering the relative calm since a January 19 ceasefire. A Palestinian source close to the ceasefire talks told AFP late Friday that Hamas had received a proposal from mediators Egypt and Qatar for re-establishing a truce and exchanging hostages for Palestinian prisoners “according to a timeline to be agreed upon”.

The source said the proposal “includes the entry of humanitarian aid” into Gaza, which has been blocked by Zionist entity since March 2. Zionists resumed intensive bombing of Gaza on Tuesday, citing deadlock in indirect negotiations on next steps in the truce after its first stage expired this month. The territory’s civil defense agency said Zionist airstrikes killed 11 people on Friday—three in pre-dawn strikes and eight more during the daytime.

On Thursday, it had reported a death toll of 504 since the bombardment resumed, one of the highest since the war began more than 17 months ago. In a statement, Katz said: “I ordered (the army) to seize more territory in Gaza... The more Hamas refuses to free the hostages, the more territory it will lose, which will be annexed by (Zionists)”.

Should Hamas not comply, Katz also threatened “to expand buffer zones around Gaza to protect civilian population areas and soldiers by implementing a permanent occupation of the area”. The military urged residents of the Al-Salatin, Al-Karama and Al-Awda areas of southern Gaza to evacuate their homes Friday ahead of a threatened strike. AFP images from northern Gaza showed donkey carts piled high with belongings as residents fled their homes along rubble-strewn roads.

‘Pressure points’

Zionist forces said that they had killed the head of Hamas’s military intelligence in southern Gaza in a strike a day earlier, the latest official targeted in recent days. Resumption of large-scale military operations, coordinated with US President Donald Trump’s administration, drew widespread condemnation. The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Britain called for an immediate return to a Gaza ceasefire in a joint statement late Friday, calling the new strikes “a dramatic step backward”.

Turkey’s foreign ministry condemned what it called a “deliberate” attack on a Turkish-built hospital in Gaza. “The IDF (military) struck terrorists in a Hamas terrorist infrastructure site that previously had served as a hospital in the central Gaza Strip,” a military spokesperson told AFP in response to a question about the Turkish accusations.

In a statement, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza condemned “the heinous crime committed by the occupation in bombing the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital”, calling it “the only hospital designated for the treatment of cancer patients in the Gaza Strip”. The ministry said Zionist forces had used the hospital as “a base for its forces throughout the period of its occupation of the so-called Netzarim axis”.

President Isaac Herzog expressed worry about the government’s actions in a video statement Thursday, saying it was “unthinkable to resume fighting while still pursuing the sacred mission of bringing our hostages home”. Thousands of protesters have rallied in Jerusalem in recent days, accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of resuming military operations without regard for the safety of the hostages. Of the 251 hostages seized during Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, 58 are still held by Gaza militants, including 34 the military says are dead.

Zionist military said that it had intercepted a missile launched from Yemen, after air raid sirens sounded in Jerusalem and parts of central Zionist entity. It is the fourth missile launched from Yemen towards Zionist entity since Tuesday, after Houthi rebels threatened to escalate attacks in support of Palestinians following renewed attacks on Gaza. In a statement early Saturday, the Iran-backed group said it had “targeted Ben Gurion airport” near Tel Aviv with a ballistic missile. Zionist airspace would remain unsafe “until the aggression against Gaza stops”, the group said in the statement.

Earlier on Friday, military said it intercepted two projectiles fired from northern Gaza, which Hamas’s armed wing said was in response to “massacres against civilians”. Katz said Zionist entity would “intensify the fight with aerial, naval and ground shelling as well as by expanding the ground operation until hostages are freed and Hamas is defeated, using all military and civilian pressure points”. He said these included implementing Trump’s proposal for the United States to redevelop Gaza as a Mediterranean resort after the relocation of its Palestinian inhabitants to other Arab countries.

‘Distorting truth’

Meanwhile, Hamas on Saturday accused the United States of distorting the truth by saying the Palestinian militant group had chosen war with Zionists by refusing to release hostages. “The claim that ‘Hamas chose war instead of releasing the hostages’ is a distortion of the facts,” Hamas said in a statement in response to the accusation from US National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes on Tuesday. He had said: “Hamas could have released hostages to extend the ceasefire but instead chose refusal and war.”

The Palestinian militant group added that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “rejected these initiatives and deliberately sabotaged them to serve his political interests,” referring to criticism he has faced in Zionist entity, including from families of hostages held in Gaza. Zionists resumed air strikes on Gaza on Tuesday before sending troops back into areas evacuated during the pause in fighting. It came after weeks of disagreement with Hamas over extending the ceasefire that took effect on January 19.- AFP