A senior Israeli defense official on Monday said President Donald Trump‘s upcoming visit to the Middle East is the “window of opportunity” to secure a hostage deal, otherwise Israel will initiate a new military operation in the Gaza Strip.
“If there is no hostage deal, Operation ‘Gideon Chariots’ will begin with great intensity and will not stop until all its goals are achieved,” the official said according to a Reuters report in reference to a Sunday night decision by Israel’s security cabinet to expand operations in the Gaza Strip.
Israel will use the roughly 10-day time frame to prepare for its new operations, which will entail calling up tens of thousands of reserve troops with the goal of taking over all the Gaza Strip.
ISRAEL APPROVES PLAN TO CAPTURE ALL OF GAZA, CALLS UP TENS OF THOUSANDS OF RESERVE TROOPS
In an apparent move to counter the terror group Hamas, the Israel Defense Forces will remain in captured territory rather than withdraw forces after an operation is complete. Israel has not presented a plan for how long it intends to occupy the Palestinian lands in a move that violated U.N.-brokered treaties and internationally recognized borders.
A spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not respond to Fox News Digital’s questions.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement that the plan approved by the cabinet to occupy territory and sustain Israel’s presence in Gaza should be named the “Smotrich-Netanyahu plan” to “give up on the hostages and Israel’s security and national resilience.”
In the statement, the forum said that this plan is an admission by the government that it is choosing territories over freeing the hostages and noted that more than 70% of Israelis have opposed military prioritization over hostages in recent polling.
Trump had planned to make his trip to the Middle East, where he will visit Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates between May 13 and 16, his first international visit since re-entering the White House, to signify the significance of the region to the U.S.
While this will still be a major geopolitical visit, his first international trip ended up being his visit to Italy for Pope Francis’ funeral, where he held close discussions with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Neither the White House nor the State Department immediately responded to Fox News Digital’s questions regarding Israel’s increasingly aggressive position and how it is impacting hostage and peace deal negotiations.
Comments made by Netanyahu last week sent ceasefire negotiators reeling after he, for the first time, confirmed that returning the hostages taken by Hamas nearly 580 days ago on Oct. 7, 2023 was not his top priority.
“We have many objectives, many goals in this war. We want to bring back all of our hostages,” Netanyahu said. “That is a very important goal. In war, there is a supreme objective. And that supreme objective is victory over our enemies. And that is what we will achieve.”
The Israeli prime minister also on Saturday justified his increasingly aggressive operations in Gaza that have resulted in the death of more than 50,000 in the Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, including more than 15,600 children as of late-March, as “a war between civilization and barbarism.”
Qatar, which has been heavily involved in hostage negotiations and ceasefire efforts, responded in a Saturday post on social media and said the comments “fall short of the most basic standards of political and moral responsibility.”
“Portraying the ongoing aggression against Gaza as a defense of ‘civilization’ echoes the rhetoric of regimes throughout history that have used false narratives to justify crimes against innocent civilians,” said Majed Al Ansari, advisor to Qatar Prime Minister Mohammad Al-Thani and spokesman for the foreign ministry.
Ansari did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s questions.
Fox News’ Yael Rotem-Kuriel contributed to this report.
