Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he has directed Israel's military to take more of the Gaza Strip, initially by seizing 70 per cent of the Palestinian territory, where the population is already penned into a tiny enclave of land along the coast.
Israel effectively controls an estimated 64 per cent of the tiny coastal strip, bombarded to ruins by Israel's two-year military assault that followed the 2023 Hamas attack on southern Israel.
Under an October US-brokered truce that has failed to halt Israeli attacks or secure Hamas' disarmament, Israeli troops were meant to withdraw to a "Yellow Line" demarcating the extent of their control.
